Club wrote that the band "plays imaginative alt-rock with intense passion, and Source Tags & Codes lets the pressure build exquisitely.

"[18] Noting its "angular, Sonic Youth-style guitar and earnest anger", Blender's Michael Leonard credited the album for being "more engaging than many of [the band's] post-rock peers",[7] while Uncut similarly wrote that "compared to so many noisemongers, TOD understand that restraint enables unleashed firepower to be exhilarating and awesome.

"[15] Matt LeMay of Pitchfork awarded Source Tags & Codes a perfect score and wrote that the album "will take you in, rip you to shreds, piece you together, lick your wounds clean, and send you back into the world with a concurrent sense of loss and hope,"[13] though Conrad Keely considers this rating to be "preposterous", as "it is clearly nowhere close to a perfect album".

[4] Hobey Echlin of The Village Voice wrote that Source Tags & Codes "captures the fuzzy-math sound from too many gray-area indie bands—and it rocks hard where geezers like Mercury Rev just drift away.

"[20] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau awarded the album a "dud" rating,[21] indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought.

"[22] While noting that "there's a fantastic EP in here somewhere", Maddy Costa of The Guardian nonetheless felt that the album "is ablaze with emotion – it roars and pulses and oozes angst – but it never inspires".