As with its predecessor, New Day Rising continued to deviate from the fast-paced hardcore punk style of the band's earliest releases, showing an evolution towards slower tempos and more melody.

[citation needed] According to music journalist Andrew Earles, it expanded the more pop-oriented tracks from Zen Arcade into an entire body of work.

"[6] According to Ryan Bray of Consequence, "Zen Arcade before it made some great strides toward helping melody coexist on the same turf as hardcore, [and] then New Day Rising marked the point where the band found the balance between coarse aggression and pop rock sweetness.

"[10] New Day Rising appeared in January 1985[11] and featured slower, more melodic material, continuing the trend away from the fast hardcore punk of the band's earliest releases.

"[4] The review concluded that despite producer Spot's "characteristically cheap production", the album "doesn't just fulfill the enormous promise of the Minneapolis trio.

[24] From retrospective reviews, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that "[o]ccasionally, the razor-thin production and waves of noise mean that it takes a little bit of effort to pick out the melodies, but more often the furious noise and melodies fuse together to create an overwhelming sonic force", and that Hart and Mould "both turn in songs that are catchy, clever, and alternately wracked with pain or teeming with humor.

It's an album that captures a thoroughly road-tested band in its prime, one invigorated by its discovery of how to balance melody, noise, passion, and power without diminishing any of those aspects".