Produced by Nick Lowe and engineered by Roger Béchirian, the sessions saw Costello exert more control over production compared to This Year's Model, while Nieve contributed more to song arrangements.

For Armed Forces, Costello sought a more commercial sound than the punk rock style employed on his two previous records, resulting in a more pop-oriented production reflecting the new wave era.

[5][6][7] Under the working titles Cornered On Plastic and Emotional Fascism, Armed Forces was recorded at London's Eden Studios starting in August 1978 and lasted six weeks.

[28] Like its two predecessors, Graeme Thomson finds that Costello uses his signature wordplay on the album to great effect, composing various puns, double entendres, double-bluffs and non-sequiturs.

[16][29] Labelled by Hinton as a cross between the Byrds and the Beatles, it is addressed to Buell-type figure, but the actual subject is Costello himself, referring to his newfound sexual possibilities after achieving fame.

[9] NME's Charles Shaar Murray described it as "an ornate, melodic and exquisitely danceable pop song designed to lull American record executives into a state of false security".

[16] Writer Franklin Bruno states that while "Accidents Will Happen" was a showcase for Costello's voice, "Senior Service" "reintroduces" the Attractions and contains a widely different production style from the previous track.

[37] Described by Lundy as "intentionally cavernous and bleak",[25] Gouldstone finds it "near heavy metal",[16] while Hinton compares the intro to Thin Lizzy and the outro to the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966).

[9] "Busy Bodies" is, in Gouldstone's words, a "snappy pop tune" that evokes Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman", "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and the Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains" (1967).

[37] Like the previous track, "Two Little Hitlers" captures the album's dual themes of love and politics,[45] fully comparing the disagreements in personal relationships to opposing factions of fascism.

[9] The author Tony Clayton-Lea contends that Armed Forces, coined by Pete Thomas, continued Costello's theme of "control and domination over both governing and individual bodies".

[48][12] Additionally, the US sleeve moved the elephant cover to the back and reduced it to make room for a track listing and larger rendering of the album title and artist name.

[6] From November to December, the band toured Canada, Japan and Australia and filmed promotional videos for "Oliver's Army" and "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding".

[15] After garnering significant radio exposure in the UK,[6] "Oliver's Army" was released as a single on 2 February 1979, backed by Costello's solo rendition of the 1937 show-tune "My Funny Valentine".

[9] Murray hailed the record as containing "some of the best rock music we'll hear this year" in NME,[30] while a writer in The Observer cited it as "an album you just can't ignore".

[61] The Washington Post's Geoffrey Himes also compared Costello's lyrical strategy of placing harsh ideals into more seductive settings with Dylan's break from the folk rock movement in the mid-1960s.

[63] Writing for Rolling Stone, Janet Maslin felt the album was a "killer in several senses of the word", remarking on the brief, energetic songs with dense and sometimes overly clever but snappy lyrics.

[64] The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau felt Costello was using words to "add color and detail to his music" rather than as "a thinking, feeling person", though he approved of the "intricate pop constructions" and found the album overall to be "good" but not "great".

[64][58] Other reviewers compared Armed Forces to its two predecessors, including Ira Robbins of Trouser Press, who considered it inferior to the "supercharged bite" of This Year's Model, but nevertheless deemed it a good record in its own right.

[65] Additionally, in a review titled "Swell El", Record Mirror's Sheila Prophet found the "bitter bite" of its predecessors exchanged for "depth and subtlety and new textures".

[55] Tony Rayns of Melody Maker took issue with the use of the terms "nigger" and "darkies" in "Oliver's Army" and "Sunday's Best", respectively, but was overall positive to Costello's improved vocals and songwriting, and the performance of Nieve on keyboards.

[66] Sounds magazine's Giovanni Dadomo highlighted "Accidents Will Happen", "Big Boys" and "Green Shirt", while also naming "Goon Squad" "easily the best 'political' song of the last five years".

The tour was plagued with issues, including drug and alcohol problems, aggressive behaviour from Riviera and Costello to the press, and poor performances that led to critical and audience backlash.

He later reflected: "Some of the highly charged language may now seem a little naive; it is full of gimmicks and almost overpowers some songs with paradoxes and subverted clichés piling up into private and secret meanings.

"[37] Although he continued to reference aggressive and fascist themes in his lyrics, including on his 2020 album Hey Clockface, David A. Graham of The Atlantic argued that "he has never written another record so searing in its combination of romantic and political fury as Armed Forces.

In AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine found a more "detailed and textured pop production" on Armed Forces compared to Costello's first two albums, making the music more accessible, though the lyrics were "more insular and paranoid".

[27] Pitchfork's Matt LeMay described the production as "extravagantly layered with dense instrumentation and rich, effusive textures" that "often serve[s] to conceal, rather than reveal the nuances of Costello's songwriting".

[82] He concluded that "the greatest strength of Armed Forces may be the same thing that makes it less viscerally powerful than Costello's two prior records – its songs absolutely demand to be appreciated for their craftsmanship.

[82] Paul Sexton of uDiscoverMusic wrote that the production's "crisp and disciplined" delivery kept the material "live and vital" on a record "that enhanced Costello's reputation as an artist with depth behind the vitriol".

[23] AllMusic's Mark Deming highlighted "Accidents Will Happen" as previewing the "stylistic diversity" Costello would incorporate into future works,[89] while Stewart Mason felt that "Party Girl" presaged the soul music he would explore on Get Happy!