1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)", he remembered that the songs from Journeys to Glory had been rehearsed at concerts before they were signed to a label and had received the approval of their original fan base.

[4] He was committed to their new genre: "All fancy rock patterns had to go …, we'd discussed it at the club: these new songs would be to a disco beat; there would be a [discarding] of all the old power pop stuff; our future sound had to be like the one we heard every Tuesday night.

"[15] On the 40th anniversary of the release of "To Cut a Long Story Short", Spandau Ballet producer Richard James Burgess recalled, "Labels were at a fever pitch trying to sign the group.

[23] During a two-week stint in the summer of 1980 at a club in Saint-Tropez, the band performed "Confused" along with "Age of Blows", an instrumental that Norman felt was one of the weaker cuts on the album and theorizes "was written as an excuse to test out the Yamaha CS10 and see what it could do."

On BBC Radio 4's Mastertapes series in 2013, Kemp said, "The lyrics to those kind of songs, I mean, I suppose they owed something to Bowie's famous cut-ups, you know, slightly esoteric, this grand landscape that we're all living on.

In 1981 the pathfinding band were consolidating the new approach they had styled—White European Dance Music—led on 'The Freeze' by Gary Kemp's two-fingered synth arpeggios, plus enough percussive kick-drum snaps underpinned with bassline rhythms to fill dancefloors.

"[22] In a May 1982 interview with New Sounds New Styles magazine, Kemp was asked about working with Graham Smith on the cover art for Journeys to Glory and commented, "We enjoy playing with imagery, but at that time everyone was taking us far too seriously."

[27] In his autobiography he called it "a unique blend of constructivist propaganda, Russian folk music and slow-jive disco (pompous was fashionable then), all inspired by a typically Blitz-dreamt European nostalgia.

He had a book called Journeys to Glory about people who took their religious beliefs to masochistic extremes: "It seemed a perfect title for our first album: as well as being wonderfully pompous and presumptuous, it was made to irritate the enemy [i.e., the middle-class rock press] and clearly stated our intentions."

Blitz regular Robert Elms incorporated the title into a poem included on the inner sleeve of the album that spoke of "angular glimpses of sharp youth cutting strident shapes through the curling gray".

"[27] Another Blitz patron, Graham Smith, designed the cover for the album as well as its three singles ("To Cut a Long Story Short", "The Freeze" and the double-sided "Muscle Bound" /"Glow").

In his autobiography To Cut a Long Story Short, Hadley noted that the critic in Melody Maker "dismissed us as 'nothing more than a bundle of fancy rags without a peg to hang them on.'

[44] Billboard magazine recommended it to retailers for the appeal of its dance music but had reservations, writing that Spandau Ballet "makes a moody brand of rock with a heavy disco backbeat.

While he did not enjoy finding "a slavish reliance on the same bass lines, some pretty affected lyrics and an unwillingness to move up through the gears when build-up is called for",[49] he thought it had "a clean, spacious and unfussy approach to sound, which should ensure repeated play.

"[49] Sunie Fletcher of Record Mirror described it as "a more than fair debut album with some good songs and a couple of duff ones, a talented set of musicians and a singer who needs a tragic love affair or something to put a little humanity into his performance.

"[40] Betty Page of Sounds magazine gave the album five stars and wrote that it "oozes style, taste, cool and purity, reflecting perfectly the scene that spawned Spandau Ballet."

She concluded, "Journeys to Glory will appeal to the many nationwide who recognise the value of creativity, style, self-respect, imagination, passion and escapism, who realise music can't change the world but can influence personal attitudes.

In The Rolling Stone Album Guide Paul Evans thought "To Cut a Long Story Short" was the only good song and found "Muscle Bound" and "Reformation" to be "thin and monotonous".

[41] On AllMusic Dan LeRoy thought the band was "not quite ready for prime time" in his review of the original album,[39] but in reviewing a reissue in which it was paired with their 1982 follow-up, Diamond, Dave Thompson pointed out the shortcomings of their sophomore effort first and then wrote, "No such problems with Journeys to Glory, an album that cloaks even its ballads with a gritty sheen driving straight out of vintage Bowie (circa Station to Station), and totally lets rip across 'The Freeze', 'To Cut a Long Story Short' and, best of all, 'Muscle Bound'.

[55] It also reached the pop charts in Australia,[56] Ireland,[57] New Zealand[58] and Spain,[59] and in the US, Billboard magazine paired the 12-inch remix of the song with the dance version of "The Freeze" for their appearance on the Disco Top 100.

[64] Retrospective reviews have described it as "a minor lost classic of the early '80s UK synth pop scene"[65] and "an era-defining slice of electronic myth-making, and a great dance record to boot".

[70] One contemporary reviewer thought the song was "wonderful",[40] but another chided the band for "thinking that superbly chunky dance stance drums [were] enough to compensate for a lack of imagination.

"[71] In revisiting the album on its list of '80s debuts, Classic Pop also said, "There's a spiky funkiness about Spandau's early sound that was excised in the chase for hits, best evidenced by the choppy guitars of 'The Freeze'.

"[52] The third song released from the album, "Muscle Bound", was issued on 27 March on a double A-side single, paired with "Glow",[72] which was written after the recording of Journeys to Glory was completed.

[60] "Muscle Bound" was presented by Spandau Ballet on Top of the Pops,[76] and Russell Mulcahy was hired to direct the music video for the song, which was filmed in the Lake District in several feet of snow.

[77] "Muscle Bound" received mostly good reviews, including one proclaiming that it "shrivels the LP under its heat [and] makes those other singles sound like tinny, teenybop jingles.

[66] Thompson called it "a sweaty slab of twilight homoerotica that really is as beefy as its title suggests,"[50] and categorized all three songs from the album that were released as singles as "utterly convincing white boy Funk".

[91] When they considered Buggles founder Trevor Horn to produce the remix, Kemp realized that Spandau Ballet needed to evolve into a pop group if it was going to survive.

[92] After "Instinction" reached number 10,[55] he began to notice that the crowd of hipsters they started out wanting to please were no longer interested, and he felt free to write with no regard for danceability or the latest rhythm.