's only single to do so—and peaked inside the top 40 on the charts of Australia, Belgium, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Steve Baltin from Cash Box named 'Bang and Blame' Pick of the Week and "one of the strongest tracks on the entire album."

"[4] Terry Staunton from Melody Maker named it "one of the least effective songs on the Monster album, and therefore a particularly odd choice for a single.

"[5] Keith Cameron from NME said it "hinges on an archetypically pretty melody and Stipe's ambiguous voice, caught betwixt disdain and sympathy for the song's distressed subject".

[6] Neil Spencer from The Observer wrote that on tracks such as 'Bang and Blame', "there are bursts of the musical invention and humanist outlook that characterises their best work.