[6] In a rave review for Entertainment Weekly, Greg Sandow wrote that whereas L7's earlier albums "were forceful and bratty", Hungry for Stink "is far more sophisticated, with a musical surprise on nearly every track", and cements L7 as "one of the top hard-rocking bands of any kind, gender be damned.

"[9] Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot opined that "L7 affirms that it is a great band" with their "strongest batch of songs",[8] while Rolling Stone's Paul Corio praised L7's "smart, hard neopunk" and commented that they "kick inter-gender butt by means of power chords and grunge abandon.

"[17] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said that L7 "reverse the usual evolution" by leaning further into a grunge sound on Hungry for Stink; he credited the band for avoiding the genre's "dull despair" and instead keeping their music "rooted in the rock and roll everyday, where it belongs.

"[16] Lorraine Ali of the Los Angeles Times was less impressed, commending L7's return to a more "fuzzed-out" aesthetic but detecting "little genuine personality, be it a sense of irony or conviction, behind the lyrics, which are so predictably anti-Establishment that the only feeling you get from them is the band's need to be incredibly punk rock.

[11] Retrospectively, AllMusic's Neil Z. Yeung found that Hungry for Stink, while "not as crisp and catchy" as L7's previous album Bricks Are Heavy, nonetheless stands out as one of their "crunchiest, grimiest, and nastiest" records and "merits attention and appreciation for being the end of a certain era for the band, just as they were on the verge of a brief evolution before their two-decade hiatus.