Rock critic Lester Bangs, offering a more sympathetic appraisal of "Metal Machine Music" than most critics, wrote that "as classical music it adds nothing to a genre that may well be depleted. As rock 'n' roll it's interesting garage electronic rock 'n' roll. As a statement it's great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity—a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless." Bangs later wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on "Metal Machine Music" titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made", in which he judged it "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum". In 1998, "The Wire" included "Metal Machine Music" in its list of "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)," with Brian Duguid writing: