In a rave review, "Rolling Stone" writer Lester Bangs described "In a Silent Way" as "the kind of album that gives you faith in the future of music. It is not rock and roll, but it's nothing stereotyped as jazz either. All at once, it owes almost as much to the techniques developed by rock improvisors in the last four years as to Davis' jazz background. It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality". Davis' next fusion album, "Bitches Brew", showed him moving even further into the area that lay between the genres of rock and jazz. The dark, fractured dissonance of "Bitches Brew" ultimately proved to be instrumental in its success; it far outsold "In a Silent Way".