"The Straits Times"' music correspondent Eddino Abdul Hadi gave the album 4/5, noting how it is "full of heartfelt anthems" and features "some of their most visceral and strident anthems to date". Eddino highlighted the songs "You Have No Heart" and "Wait For The Real Storm" as stand-outs, comparing "Low's layered harmonies" on the former to his Humpback Oak tunes. Jun Sheng Ng of "Juice" magazine described "August is the Cruellest" as an "immediate counterpoint to the prevailing spirit and sentiment widespread through the city" soon after Singapore's golden jubilee celebrations, noting that it "paints a landscape of desolation the infertile and impotent wasteland we are mired in". Observing that the songs "Everything is Vibration" and "The Weight of It All" reflect the "group’s effort to return to or construct a Southeast Asian or Singaporean sound", with their quotes from Yan Jun’s poetry and use of traditional Chinese instruments like the guzheng and dizi, Ng criticised how "they are unavoidably dwarfed by the already heavy weight and influence of Eliot’s". "Honeycombers" praised "August is the Cruellest" as an "audial commentary on the looming, cataclysmic destruction of the earth" and a "revolutionary record [that challenges a negative status quo that many have refused to acknowledge".