| Michael Azerrad in Our Band Could Be Your Life | Chuck Eddy in Stairway To Hell | |
| Black Flag | "...boiled over with rage on several fronts: police harassment, materialism, alcohol abuse, the stultifying effects of consumer culture..." | "...if they think life is so goddamned hard for themselves, they oughta talk to some people who aren't football-player-shaped Caucasian thugs." |
| Minor Threat | "...you couldn't play this incredible music if you were fucked up..." | "DC's band of bald puritans almost certainly could've benefited from a guzzle or toke or three." |
| Husker Du | "...occupied and unexplored a no-man's land between hardcore noise and pure pop, reclaiming melody from the domain of mass-produced pap, but furiously smudging it over with distortion." | "Their knack for pow-pow-powerpop hooks has rarely been equaled, and unlike so many of their disciples and contemporaries, they wrote actual songs, but I still get the feeling something big's missing." |
| Sonic Youth | "The (band) members were fans of pop art and the fertile juxtapositions of postmodernism..." | "...the band thinks it's cleverer than the popjunk it's so fond of plundering ... which makes it patronizing, campy, cynical, and full of shit." |
| Butthole Surfers | "(Their music) was creepy and dark and ugly and weird." | "...a snowjob's a snowjob." |
| Big Black | "...the band's music ... was original to a downright confrontational degree." | "...like Warren Zevon on The Envoy only not as clever." |
| Dinosaur Jr | "...music that had strong melodies, gorgeous chords, and dramatic dynamic shifts." | "...if you make re-creating Side Two of Rust Never Sleeps your life's goal, at least if you don't have the songs to pull the mission off (which you don't, trust me.)" |
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