"[5] Stewart Lee of The Times remarked: "Gayle's ferocious releases have, sometimes, been punctuated by gentler projects, and on the first disc here he is in unusually tuneful mood, before the second sees him cautiously unfurl his thunderous sheets of sound.

"[7] Writing for All About Jazz, Jeff Stockton commented: "Ali combines his familiarity with the free jazz idiom and an intuitive feel for inside-out rhythms, while Parker's chunky riffing enables Gayle to ricochet his own runs off the bass notes as if opening a box of ping-pong balls.

Gayle's tone is fractured, jagged, cubist, off-kilter, staggered, strangulated and feverish and together the band performs with a singularity of purpose that only top musicians can attain.

"[8] Point of Departure's Bill Shoemaker noted that the album is "remarkably rooted in blues, motif-driven heads and otherwise thematically based pieces," and stated: "the materials give Gayle well-grounded lenses through which his fiercely braying alto burns with precision, bringing his fluent use of bop and blues idioms into sharper focus than usual.

"[9] In an article for JazzWord, Ken Waxman wrote: "the three continue to prove that time hasn't diminished their skills or original thought processes," and noted that "there's a section in Parker's 'Zero Blues' where Gayle's solo construction is so down-home that it makes him a sonic ringer for R&B altoist Tab Smith.