Thom Jurek, reviewing the album for AllMusic, praises the album highly: "After three decades, "Love Devotion Surrender" still sounds completely radical and stunningly, movingly beautiful." Robert Palmer, writing for "Rolling Stone", is ambivalent about the album, calling it "loud and insistent...depend on monochord drones and simple modes for its structure and on sheer screaming force for much of its effect." He thinks more highly of Carlos Santana's playing than of McLaughlin's, which he suggests lacks feeling and relies on technicality: "Here, at his most inspired, McLaughlin is exhilarating if a bit monolithic." Later, in a positive review of Santana's "Welcome" (1973), Palmer said the album "was simply a series of ecstatic jams on Coltrane and Coltrane-influenced material."