"Entertainment!" was ranked the fifth best album of 1979 by "NME". Reviewing the album in "Rolling Stone" in 1980, David Fricke regarded "Entertainment!" as "the best debut album by a British band – punk or otherwise – since the original English release of "The Clash" in 1977". "Creem"s RJ Smith, looking back on "Entertainment!" in 1984, found it to be "the most difficult Gang album, because it's so damn hard to find the front door to the thing. The ugly emotions "Entertainment!" dredges up are almost freakish, and all the more unsettling for the way they poke unexpectedly through the record's detached, architectonic front."