The album showcases the band's unique "crush collision" sound, incorporating sampling, noisy power chords, hard percussion, house beats, and influences from post-punk and hip hop.

Lead singer Steve Elvidge's lyrics display a Northern, bitter tone, incorporating sloganeering and commenting on contemporary politics.

One Thousand Years of Trouble was promoted by a live tour and the release of three singles, all of which had specially commissioned twelve-inch mixes, including a remix of "Take It!"

This was despite Age of Chance and other contributors like Big Flame and Stump being stylistically different to the album's characteristic indie pop sound.

[7] The cover features an industrial music style,[2] described by bass player Geoff Taylor as "[removing] the sex and [replacing] it with lump hammers.

At the time, he was a London-based hip-hop DJ and host of the "Delerium at the Astoria" club night,[10] and his reputation in the London's UK hip hop scene was strong enough that by 1987, he and his brother were mentioned by Derek B on his single "Get Down."

Later on, Gray sat in on a session in order "to get the general vibe," and then he and the band set about recording demos of the songs in an expensive Leeds studio.

Scrapped during these sessions was a work-in-progress between Taylor and Noel later described by the former as a stylistic fusion between the music of Sonic Youth and the Glitter Band with Tony Iommi-style guitar.

At the start of these sessions, they spent a decent amount of time experimenting with different sounds for each track, shaping the album's musical style.

[10] One Thousand Years of Trouble showcases the band's "crush collision" musical hybrid, combining crunchy but clipped guitar power chords, grumbling bass, blaring drumming, house beats, samples and even gospel choirs.

[1] Stewart Mason of AllMusic feels the album's sound is characterised by the prominence of the noisy guitars, pounding drum rhythms, wayward samples and loops and Elvidge's hoarse, shouted singing, which he felt recalls "the group's Leeds forebears the Mekons and Gang of Four,"[13] while Mark Emsley of The Quietus described the album as "35 minutes of samples, noise, guitars, northern grit and sarcasm.

[11] "Ready or Not Here We Come" features satirical lyrics concerning American military adventurism, while "Hold On" was pitched to several television networks as potential theme music for coverage of the 1987 general election.

", a heavy, layered song containing raspy noise and hip hop loops, addresses what the group considered to be widely-held misconceptions about the band and their sound.

It was described by Angus Batey of The Quietus as the song which likely best exemplifies "the mixture of inspiration, madness, intuition, confidence, technical achievement and musical daring that made the band so remarkable at the time.

[1] The cardboard inner sleeve of the LP features numerous mass-media related images, including a manipulation of the Bayeux Tapestry and the large rendered text "Listen / Crush / The Mighty Roar of Consumption, Construction & Corruption / This is the Sound.

[16] The Designers Republic's initial "first thought" sketch of the cover, drawn onto A4 paper,[17] and the completed cardboard inner sleeve, are housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum collection.

"[21] Scott Schnider of Trouser Press was more reserved, saying "One Thousand Years of Trouble benefits from being more gimmicky and over-the-top, with lots more sampling; even so, an album's worth of this stuff is pretty grating.

"[5] Barry Young of Aberdeen Press and Journal felt the "dull" album was a fusion of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "more doom-laden period" fused with "a scratch version of Dead or Alive.

"[22] Among retrospective reviews, Stewart Mason of AllMusic named the record an "Album Pick" and wrote: "Abrasive, noisy, yet vibrant and intriguing, One Thousand Years of Trouble deserved more attention than it got.

"[13] Reflecting on the album's thirtieth anniversary, Angus Batey of The Quietus wrote that the record could likely only have been produced at its "precise moment in time" when house and hip hop were played together in club DJ sets, before the rise of the hip house fusion genre and the separation of audiences between the two genres.

[23] Despite being commercially unsuccessful upon release, One Thousand Years of Trouble has been cited as a groundbreaking and influential album, anticipating the musical direction of several bands later on in the 1980s.

Batey wrote that, "with the exception of Big Audio Dynamite, no-one else was doing anything in quite the same area in 1987," writing that Age of Chance "set a template others followed.

[16] Mason reflected: "Age of Chance was no more than 18 months ahead of its time -- two years, tops -- but that short gap was enough to doom the band commercially.

[10] Batey also writes that the album's engineers would "draw on the lessons learned in later life," noting how Mark "Spike" Stent would later work on "rock-rap-sample-pop collision/collage projects" including U2's Pop (1997) and Bjork's Vespertine (2001), while Steve Osborne would go on to co-produce Happy Mondays' "dance-rock breakthrough" album, Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches (1990).