Is This What You Want? superstar backing musicians, saying, "they're always talkin' about who's on the album and not the album itself." Writing in "ZigZag" in July 1974, Andy Childs advised the magazine's readers: "it's worth its weight in gold, so if it's absent from your collection, add it to your shopping list of second-hand records." Greenfield and Childs both recognised Harrison's "Sour Milk Sea" as a highlight of the album. Richie Unterberger of AllMusic offers a less favourable opinion of "Is This What You Want?", describing Lomax as "a passable but unarresting singer and songwriter". Unterberger identifies the best moments as the "Beatlesque" songs
This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get band, with no contributions from either Levene or bassist Pete Jones (who contributed to several tracks on "Commercial Zone"). The song "The Order of Death" appears in the 1990 science fiction-horror film "Hardware" and on the soundtrack to the 1999 horror film "The Blair Witch Project". It was also featured in the "Miami Vice" episode "Little Miss Dangerous" and the "Mr. Robot" episode "eps2.7_init_5.fve". "This is Not a Love Song" appears in the film "Waltz With Bashir". The line "This is what you want... This is what you get" appears in both "Bad Life" and "The Order of Death". All