Reception
The song received a generally mixed reception at the time of album release. Spin called it "dramatic". Rolling Stone was quite positive about the song, saying "the band distinguishes itself from the post-Coldplay pack with a flair for arrangements that almost justifies the grandiosity of 16-minute epics like "The Lightning Strike"".
PopMatters' response was very positive. Reviewer Ross Langager called the song "a 16-minute, three-movement celestial metaphor of operatic grandeur and overwhelming beauty". He further praised the song, saying: "Linked together by alike synthesizer bedrocks of gradually increasing warmth and brightness, the song-cycle progresses from silver-lined dark clouds to hints of dawn before finally settling on a lovely, sun-drenched morning. But even when faced by such an inexorable process of hopefulness, Lightbody has to temper the surge of light: "Slowly the day breaks/Apart in our hands"".
The Independent's Andy Gill, however, had mixed feelings about the song. He said that the song was an attempt to "broaden the band's style". He called it ambitious and felt that "its incorporation of minimalist techniques, glockenspiel, brass colouration and shoegazey guitar textures" made the song "lengthy". He made comparisons with Coldplay, calling the band "self-absorbed" but said Snow Patrol were "more bearable".
On the other hand, Pitchfork Media's Joshua Love reviewed the song negatively, writing that it seemed as if the band was "striving to be taken more seriously", by "stringing together three ponderous, already-overlong songs and calling the impenetrable result a 16-minute stand-alone epic "The Lightning Strike"". He further wrote that the band's wasn't talented enough to do justice to "these newer, more artful ambitions".
Read more about this topic: The Lightning Strike
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