[1] Writing and rehearsing the songs for the album took eight to nine months, although half of this time was also spent finding a replacement for guitar player Jim Martin, who had been fired from the band following the release of Angel Dust in 1992.

Bottum claimed the combination of Wallace and Spruance as two new influences helped to create "a real up-in-the-air, what the fuck is gonna happen kind of feel" while recording.

[5] Drummer Mike Bordin has described the composition of "Digging the Grave" as attempting to recreate the sounds of the band's first two albums, "but tighter, faster, and harder".

In a contemporary review of King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime, Anthony Violanti of The Buffalo News described the song as a "power pop masterpiece";[24] while CMJ New Music Monthly compared it to the sound of AC/DC, adding that it "offers hooks lurking deep within the miasma".

[25] Rolling Stone's Al Weisel highlighted it as one of the best songs on the album, describing it as having "a grungy feel that isn't completely ruined by Patton's histrionic screaming".

[27] Writing for The Quietus, Dave McNamee considered the song one of King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime's more accessible and straightforward entries, but added that it "proves that when Faith No More do ‘ordinary’ they still do it with a million more unexpected catchy twists and malevolent breakdowns than anything one-note imitators [...] could dream of".