It spent one week on the UK Albums Chart at number 67, 19 places lower than its predecessor Middle Class Revolt, marking the end of one of the group's relatively more successful periods.

[3] Cerebral Caustic turned out to be the beginning of a period of considerable turbulence for the group; having not dismissed anyone since 1990, Smith sacked keyboardist Dave Bush by letter shortly after the album's completion.

[4] There were long-standing rumours that an alternative, superior mix of this album existed, partly fuelled by Smith's statement in an interview released to the press on a promotional cassette that he and Karl Burns had re-recorded the guitars after the rest of the group had been ejected from the studio.

The original "rough" mixes were included on the 2006 double-CD reissue by Castle Music and showed no major differences from the released version; the sound is harsher (possibly the result of being mastered from a copy of the cassette), but Bush is no more prominent.

"[5] Jim Sullivan, reviewing the album for The Boston Globe, called it "another jagged pill from this long-churning engine of gleeful bile 'n' vitriol".

Rich with barbed hooklines and canny catch-phrases from a band that continues to refine its deliciously jagged edge, Cerebral Caustic is the best Fall album in years and a good omen for its future.