Jake Austen for Time Out described the film as follows:After the Beatles conquered the world, America responded with the Monkees, a friendlier version playing Brill Building hits.

Inversely, in Germany, a pair of avant-garde geniuses (Walther Niemann and Karl-H. Remy) conceptualized the Monks, a group of bizarre anti-Beatles who would write their own dark minimalist rock.

The gifted band, a group of five Americans who had recently finished their U.S. military service at a German base, had honed its skills by playing up to 40 hours a week in the same beat clubs that provided the Beatles' training.

The musicians' new managers dressed them in black, shaved their heads like monks, provided them with a series of manifestos, and coached them to reconfigure their band to feature tribal drumming, feedback and electric banjo.

[2] Dennis Harvey of Variety praised that "Helmers do a vivid job etching the creatively fervid times, with an editing style whose dynamism echoes that of Monk music".

Much like Eberhard Fechner's great documentary about the Comedian Harmonists, the film, through individual interviews made decades later, neatly documents not just how they came together and fell apart, but the remarkable performances they did in between.

Special guest musicians Mark E. Smith (The Fall), The Raincoats, Schorsch Kamerun (Goldenen Zitronen) and Peter Hein (Fehlfarben) celebrated together with Monks their comeback.