"Hail to the Thief" has a score of 85 out of 100 on review aggregate site Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim". Neil McCormick, writing for "The Daily Telegraph", called it "Radiohead firing on all cylinders, a major work by major artists at the height of their powers". Chris Ott of "Pitchfork" wrote that Radiohead had "largely succeeded in their efforts to shape pop music into as boundless and possible a medium as it should be," assigning it a "Best New Music" designation. "New York" critic Ethan Brown said that "Hail to the Thief" "isn't a protest album, and that's why it works so well. As with great Radiohead records past, such as "Kid A", the music – restlessly, freakishly inventive – pushes politics far into the background." Andy Kellman of AllMusic wrote that "despite the fact that it seems more like a bunch of songs on a disc rather than a singular body, its impact is substantial", concluding that the band "have entered a second decade of record-making with a surplus of momentum". In "Mojo", Peter Paphides wrote that "Hail to the Thief" "coheres as well as anything else in their canon".