Neon Bible became Arcade Fire's highest-charting album at the time, debuting on the Billboard 200 at number two, selling 92,000 copies in its first week and more than 400,000 to date.

Publications like NME and IGN praised the album for its grandiose nature,[8][9] while Rolling Stone and Uncut opined that it resulted in a distant and overblown sound.

[13] Tracks were sent to several well-known mixers/producers to experiment with and after deciding they liked Nick Launay's ideas best, the band invited him to their studio to work on the songs further.

For a month Launay worked with the album's engineer and co-producer Marcus Strauss on the mixing of each song, with the band regularly driving up from Montreal to assess their progress.

[13] Beginning work on Neon Bible immediately following a North American tour in support of the band's first album, Funeral, songwriter Win Butler, born in the United States but having lived in Canada for several years, said that he felt he was observing his homeland from an outsider's point of view.

[15] Once the title of the album was decided upon, the band was further inspired after they, according to Win Butler, "watched a lot of TV preachers, get-rich-quick schemes on YouTube.

[14] The band used a number of less common instruments to achieve this sound; in addition to the orchestra and choir, Neon Bible features a hurdy-gurdy, mandolin, accordion and pipe organ.

Butler would introduce "(Antichrist Television Blues)" during live performances as "a song about what happens when fathers grow up to manage their daughters.

[21] Frontman Win Butler stated in an interview that the album title is derived from him being particularly attracted to the image, not from the John Kennedy Toole novel The Neon Bible.

On December 26, 2006, they supported Haitian charity organization Partners In Health by releasing the song "Intervention" on iTunes and donating the proceeds.

On his blog, Win Butler quipped, "I guess it is sort of charming that we can send the wrong song to the whole world with a click of a mouse... Oh well.

This was followed on February 5, 2007, with the band releasing a promotional pamphlet as a JPEG image on their website that included album-related imagery and much of the French and English text from "The Wolf and the Fox".

After speculation over what the website was about, including rumors of new material or a live streaming of a concert, it was eventually revealed to be a video for "Neon Bible", featuring Win Butler's face and hands, which the viewer can interact with during the song.

[28] Arcade Fire began their tour in support of the album in January and February 2007, playing a series of concerts at churches and other small venues in Ottawa,[29] Montreal, London and New York.

The band then began an 11-date European leg at Glastonbury Festival on June 22 before returning to North America for 10 more LCD Soundsystem-supported dates beginning September 15 at Austin City Limits.

[44] Upon release, Neon Bible garnered universal acclaim, receiving an 87—the seventh highest score of 2007—from review aggregator Metacritic.

[45] NME reviewer Mark Beaumont commented the album "is a climactic monolith of a record in the grand tradition of melodic transatlantic clamour rock.

Vocalist Sabrina Ellis commented that "the themes in the album, of outrage at U.S. leadership in the early 2000s, and a need to escape our social climate, sadly, remain pertinent today.