With Anne Husick and Mark Lonergan replacing them, the band entered their "classic line-up" and recording The Word and the Flesh in New York City in spring 1990, with Poss acting as producer.

The new line-up recorded the band's second album, Love Agenda (1989), and a Peel Sessions EP that was not released until 1992, but the two new guitarists ultimately quit, with Haglof attending medical school and Hamilton quickly forming the more metal-influenced Helmet.

In an interview with The Chicago Tribune, who considered the line-up to "so successfully subsume their individual abilities to the group aesthetic," Poss said "it's hard to find people who are both talented and restrained.

"[3] Punk Auction said the album "employed a more focused attack, typified by a lesser emphasis on reverb and feedback, to arrive at a more accessible sound.

"[6] Parker commented that "the guitars operate as interlocking pieces of a larger puzzle, while bassist Susan Stenger floats below, providing structure without being chained to the beat.

"[11] He described "Plot Twist" and "Silver Lining" as examples of songs when "the band breaks loose from their throbbing chords to deliver a crunchy punch to the solar plexus," but noted that, "mostly, though, the effect is of rich lattices of guitar and intermingling swells, lifting and propelling the songs through an omnipresent guitar drone.

Bassist Stenger's throaty vocals add a moody counterpoint to the guitars' pitched screech and anchor the album's opening two tracks, not incidentally two of the better compositions on the disc.

[13] "Tilt", described by Onda Rock as "a truly shocking piece for the volume and dynamic outcomes to which it arrives," was initially included in Poss' demo tape of four tracks, where he added "the song of Susan Stenger (who also adapted the text of my fist).

"[14] He recalled that he had recorded the intro feedback guitar inside the loft of Nicolas Collins, and used two electric basses and distorted drum machine rather crude.

I like mysterious reasons, buried, the sounds that are fighting against each other to be heard in opposition to the standardization of "battery-hand-and everything else subordinate to this" that characterizes a large part of rock music, even the same noise-rock.

[21] Describing the remix, Trouser Press said it was "fine but unessential, as is the quintet's seductively subdued interpretation of the Stones' "Paint It, Black.

"[22] A more mixed review came from Ivan Kreilkamp of Spin, who said "a band with a big booming sound must take care not to fall into empty portentiousness.

When Thaila Zedek sang for Live Skull–a group often sharing Band of Susans' Glenn Branca trained New York guitar drone heritage–she always managed, with a phrase as simple as "It's not really having fun / it's like trying to forget someone," to pin a recognizable emotion to the vast swell of the music.

The Word and the Flesh suggests a penchant for abstract allegory that the song titles "Ice Age" and "Estranged Labor" distressingly confirm.

[11] He said that "most rewarding are the moments when the band breaks loose from their throbbing chords to deliver a crunchy punch to the solar plexus, such as on "Plot Twist" and "Silver Lining."