"[3] When asked about the optimism of the album and the band's work in general, Coyne says "I don’t really believe anyone who walks home and says, “Everything’s okay.” The reason we’re optimistic is that a lot of things aren’t great and we have to find a way to get through it… I don’t want someone to listen and only hear that I’m just some scared old man.

Club, states "The Terror is the sound of The Flaming Lips going from a group experience to an internal monologue, the perfect record for any fan who has ever felt like the band could use two “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”s for every “Race For The Prize.”[6] Stuart Berman of Pitchfork Magazine states "with The Terror, the Lips take the bold step of bursting their own bubble.

The band’s unrelentlingly bleak new album relates to its predecessor much as Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots did to The Soft Bulletin, retaining its antecedent’s weighty mood but deconstructing the instrumental bombast into more skeletal, mechanical forms", but states later in the review "it still feels underdeveloped in spots.

At 13 minutes, centerpiece track “You Lust” is the longest song to appear on a proper Lips record since the 1980s, and a companion piece to Embryonic’s “Powerless”, using a coolly repetitive organ refrain as the foundation for an agitated, free-form synth freakout.

But its imposing grandeur is diffused by an intrusive, creepily whispered chorus incantation and a drifting, protracted denouement that lingers for far too long.

In Our Heart” (a bookend echo of “Look… The Sun Is Rising”) doesn’t quite deliver the blown-out grand finale its repeated 1-2-3-4 build-ups suggest, instead simmering down before reaching full blast.