"Blabbermouth"s Don Kaye gave the opinion that "a handful of songs" on "Christ Illusion" "are either too generic or the arrangements are too clumsy to work well", and specifically singled out the track: "I'm looking at you, 'Jihad' and 'Skeleton Christ'." Ben Ratliff of "New York Times" remarked that the song is "predictably tough stuff, but let's put it on a scale. It is tougher, and less reasoned, than Martin Amis's recent short story 'The Last Days of Muhammad Atta.' It is no tougher than a taped message from Al Qaeda." Peter Atkinson of "KNAC.com" was equally unimpressed, describing the group's choice of song climax as: