Retrospective reviews were more positive. Greg Burk of "LA Weekly" said that the book stood as "the most self-abasing and funny piece of rock mythology ever written." Emily Barker of "NME" deemed "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" one of the "juciest" rock star memoirs of all time and praised it for being revealing. "Rolling Stone" called the book "engrossing" while "Grantland" Steven Hyden said that it is Manson's "most interesting work." Hyden added "One of the great 'tawdry' rock books, "The Long Hard Road" reads like an Oliver Stone adaptation of "Hammer of the Gods", taking all the tropes of rock exposés — the excessive drug use, the gross-out groupie debauchery, the studio-bound infighting — and pushing them to bizarre, sickening, and compulsively readable extremes." Craig Hlavaty said that the book is one of the greatest "Rock Tell-All Autobiographies" of all time. In an article describing Manson as a reactionary comparable to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, J. R. Moores of "Drowned in Sound" said that ""The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" is Ayn Rand for people with pentagram thumb-rings."