The album received a rating of 3.5 stars out of 5 from AllMusic, with Ted Mills describing it as "a mixture of lackluster performances and songs filled with vigor and fury". the "NME"s Ian McCann gave the album "7/10 by their own standards, 8/10 by everyone else's", calling the band "professionally incompetent, true punk artisans making masterpieces sound like demos". Jim Sullivan, for "The Boston Globe", stated the album has "enough caustic barbs and wry witticisms snake through the dense mix to provide cerebral fun for those who like to carp along", going on to say "It's nasty, it's gleeful, it's the Fall still twisting the ironic/angry knife." Mark Jenkins, in "The Washington Post", described it as "unusually smooth for an album by these veteran British post-punk eccentrics" viewing its highlights to be "its irascible mantras, notably the unusually quick-tempoed "Hey! Student" and the dense "Shut Up!"". Stereogum's Robert Ham viewed it as their "best album in at least five years". The album was controversial for its writing credits, in which all Fall originals were credited to Mark E. Smith, Craig Scanlon and Steve Hanley, despite some of the tracks having already been credited differently on the preceding single releases. According to drummer Simon Wolstencroft (who claimed to have co-written "Middle Class Revolt" and "City Dweller"), there was "a misprint on the credits due to a cock-up at the record label". Some CD editions erroneously list "War" as track 13, although the actual running order on CD is correct. The album was remastered and reissued as an expanded two-disc set in 2006. The second disc included the group's 17th session for John Peel, alternate mixes of several album tracks previously issued on singles and a clutch of rare or previously unheard remixes. Disc one Disc two