[4] NME scored the album one out of ten, calling it a "slickly produced machiavellian plundering of pop classics" and a "clumsy effort to resurrect a career that was a fluke in the first place.

He argued that "Bikini Machine" plagiarises The Beatles' "Across the Universe", and concluded: "Sadly lacking in anything even remotely approaching originality, King Kong Groover is the sound of a career spinning into terminal decline.

[11] Kevin Courtney of The Irish Times found the record to be a marked improvement over predecessor The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes (1996), but noted that despite its "[aspirations] to Ziggy Stardust-era elevation, Babylon Zoo are still tied down by too many threadbare ideas".

[12] In a favourable retrospective review, AllMusic's Dave Thompson said that while there is "nothing in sight to even approach the peaks that their debut hit 'Spaceman' attained", the album has "yearning majesty" and "neo-operatic flair".

[3] Virgin Encyclopedia of Nineties Music author Colin Larkin was mildly positive, but remarked that Mann's "full-on adoption of glam rock... appeared too late to cash in on the attendant furore surrounding Todd Haynes' genre tribute, Velvet Goldmine.