"[10] In a contemporary review of the album, Bob Palmer of Rolling Stone magazine believed Carlos Garnett's saxophone playing sounded marginalized, but wrote that the music is "bracing, popping, at least one step ahead of the many Davis imitators.

The result is the purest jazz-funk record ever—not as quick or tricky as James Brown, but more richly layered, riffs and drones and wah-wahs and tunelets and weird noises and shifting key centers snaking along on a sexually solicitous, subtly indomitable pulse.

"[1]According to AllMusic editor Steve Huey, "melody isn't the point of this music; it's about power, rhythm, and the sum energy of the collective, and of Davis' electric jazz-rock albums, In Concert does one of the most mind-bending jobs of living up to those ideals".

"[14] JazzTimes writer Tom Terrell called Davis "a spiritual Hendrix with his own cosmic band of gypsies", and commented that the album's "visionary performance ... predicts hip hop ('Rated X''s bassline = 'White Lines'), Ornette's Prime Time ('Black Satin') and Talking Heads ('Ife')".

[15] In a mixed review, Don Heckman of the Los Angeles Times criticized Davis' use of the wah-wah effects controller and said that he was "not in particularly exceptional form" because he had "moved more deeply into pounding funk rhythms and fairly static sound textures.