Songfacts®:

• This song finds Bullet For My Valentine at their most gnarly and aggressive as frontman Matt Tuck takes aim at treacherous individuals. Though these "snakes" with "venomous tongues" are slowly driving their victims mad, the singer sees they still struggle to break away. He urges them to "bring out the knives" and cut themselves free from the toxic relationships.
• "Knives" is the lead single from Bullet for My Valentine's eponymous seventh album. Regarding the decision to make it a self-titled affair and release this song first, Tuck told James Wilson-Taylor of Rock Sound: "We're kind of - not in a negative way - we're letting go of the past, and we wanted to start fresh. And we thought now's the time. Everyone feels good. Everyone's in a really good place. And we wanted to come out swinging. We just feel it's a statement record. When people hear 'Knives', they'll be, like, 'Oh, s--t.' Wait till you hear the rest of the record. It's a statement record for us. And we felt like the time was right to kind of put our flag in the sand. Bullet are here, and this is who we are now, and this is where we are going."
• Bullet for My Valentine played "Knives" live for the first time on June 20, 2021 as part of the Download Pilot festival at Donington Park in Leicestershire, UK.
• Tuck wrote the song with the band's guitarist, Michael Paget.
• Bullet for My Valentine recorded this song and rest of the album at Treehouse Studio in Chesterfield, UK. They laid it down with longtime producer Carl Bown, who co-produced the band's 2015 album, Venom, and produced and mixed their 2018 set Gravity.