[3] Like the band's previous album, The Grand Illusion (1977), it managed to achieve triple platinum certification, thanks to the hit singles "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)" and "Renegade".

The theme of the album, as Dennis DeYoung explained on In the Studio with Redbeard which devoted an entire episode to Pieces of Eight, was about "not giving up your dreams just for the pursuit of money and material possessions".

Rolling Stone reviewer Lester Bangs was critical of the album, writing that "what's really interesting is not that such narcissistic slop should get recorded, but what must be going on in the minds of the people who support it in such amazing numbers.

Yet there's a thin but crucial line between those qualities and what it takes to fill arenas today: sheer self-aggrandizement on the most puerile level.

"[9] The Globe and Mail noted that "when Styx strays too far from its rock and roll foundations ... as on the Gothic-pretentious numbers by Dennis De Young like 'Lords of the Ring', it starts getting less credible.