[9] The album's opening song "Transmission" was reminiscent of the Manic Street Preachers' early glam pop work.

[22] Two versions were released on CD: the first with "Art Since 1978" and "Dead Man", while the second featured "The Aim of the Game" and "Young Heart Attack".

's Rob Bolton considered Transmission "a much better rock record" than their debut release, full of "louder guitars and more hooks to please fans of the scene".

[31] Randy Harward of CMJ New Music Report noted that the album was a "12-pack of the same spacy-snotty-slick glam rock poured" onto the band's debut.

[11] Billboard contributor Bradley Bambarger said that after the opening song, "it's mostly downhill", akin to their "intermittently diverting but ultimately superior" debut.

[32] In a review for NME, Mark Beaumont wrote that Jones' "birth could probably have been accused of style over content but it’s on ‘Transmission’ that his shallowness really shines".

He added that the "ideology, big shiny guitars and o’er-vaulting ambition to be the Last Great Pop Stars are all proudly in yer face but the tunes – how can we put this?

"[30] The Boston Phoenix writer Mark Woodlief said it had "big, boisterous production values" compared to its predecessor, though "what this beautifully if somewhat excessively crafted album sounds like is various parts of [...] Jones’s record collection".

[29] Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly reviewed Transmission with two others albums; he simply commented that the band's "glam-Bowie reinventions, culminat[e] midway in the pop-rock nuggetry of 'Plane Going Down' before crashing to earth".

[14] AllMusic reviewer Dean Carlson wrote that while it was "marginally stronger" than their debut album, it "forgets to bring along the same natural pop drive and offers more of the same well-honed faux iconic babble".

[15] Eric J. Iannelli for Ink 19 said album "suffer from frivolous overproduction, in both musical and lyrical terms it is tediously bland".