[3][5] According to Ryan Reft, the lyrics feature a "mix of resiliency, stoicism, and resignation [...] Machinists fill themselves with bottle after bottle of “High Life” on the weekend, but hardly remain confined by such an existence: “There are things that are built in the skulls of men.” On “3 Swallows,” Casey finds a place between desperation and hope: “Uninvincible, close but not pitiful, I discovered to drink it slowly, the great unfolding, and wait for their arms to hold me.”"[5] Evan Minsker writes: "Scouring the lyrics sheet for No Passion All Technique, you'll find cold detachment and cynicism all over the place.

Pitchfork's Evan Minsker writes that though the album "takes several Detroit reference points in its stride, it's more than "a Detroit record": Their characters aren't hollow archetypes, but people with ideas, struggles, and stories set to dextrously played speed punk, psych melodies, and gentle fingerpicking [...] For a debut LP, No Passion All Technique is an impressive showing of sonic, lyrical, and emotional range, and it all falls under a cohesive banner.

"[6] Crack magazine compared the music to "late-era Black Flag" and Pissed Jeans, praising "the smart storytelling skills and brilliantly sardonic humor of vocalist Joe Casey.

"A band capable of serviceably [sic] capturing the spirit of any of the aforementioned would be worth noting," he writes, "but the truly impressive thing about No Passion All Technique is that it doesn't simply focus the laser on any one point; instead, it moves through all those speeds convincingly without coming off as a tourist, while staying well enough within the Venn diagram to hold it all together.

Ross Horton of MusicOMH called it "an essential reissue of an incredible debut record, [...] it’s also an artefact that we can view with some measure of context.

"[17] Lucy Boosey of The Line of Best Fit called it "a record of decadence to behold, pouring filth and work into an album that has yet been little heard [...]"[14] Others, like Abi Crawford of Loud and Quiet criticized the "one-track garage sound, [...] boring things like production value are on the more primitive and muddy side too [...]"[16] Brad Garcia of Exclaim!