Don Kaye of "Kerrang!" praised the band's "confidence and identity", unusual in debut albums. However, the album still received mixed reviews overall. Music journalists often blasted the band as "rip-offs" of grunge acts such as Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. "Entertainment Weekly"s Deborah Frost wrote that "Stone Temple Pilots' hit 'Sex Type Thing' could be Mike Tyson's rape defense transcribed into grunge rock. It's unclear whether STP, which sounds like it has crash-landed Pearl Jam into Alice in Chains, is condemning or identifying with its narrator. With a real point of view, this band could be bigger than an accident." Paul Evans of "Rolling Stone" concluded that "inner child of Stone Temple Pilots is Iron Maiden, and that kid just won't quit howling". Robert Christgau, writing in "The Village Voice", felt that the band is hard to distinguish from various other hard rock acts and said that, despite their best power chords, "Sex Type Thing" shows that they should "reconceive their aesthetic strategy—critiquewise, irony has no teeth when the will to sexual power still powers your power chords."