Blues For The Red Sun - Reception

Reception

The album received generally positive reviews from both fans and critics. Steve Taylor considers it the best album Kyuss ever made. Allmusic's Eduardo Rivadavia gave the album four and a half out of five stars and called the album, "a major milestone in heavy music." In particular he praised producer Chris Goss, who had also been the singer-guitarist for Masters of Reality, for its "unique heavy/light formula." Debaroh Frost of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a B+, and Italian music writer Piero Scaruffi gave the album an eight out of possible ten rating. Scaruffi went on to call the album, "one of the masterpieces of noise rock." Scaruffi also ranks it as the third best metal album of all times, just after Metallica's Master of Puppets and before Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. Rolling Stone considered "Green Machine" and "Thong Song" to be the albums highlights and also thought that the production had greatly improved from the band's prievious album, Wretch. Kerrang! also gave the album a favorable review. College Music Journal claimed that the album was "raw and unorthodox" and, like Rivadavia, complimented Chris Goss for the production. Q called it "one of the landmark metal albums of the '90s," and rewarded it a perfect five out of five stars.

Spin ranked Blues for the Red Sun 10th on their list of the "10 Best Albums You Didn't Hear in '92." In 2002, Spin put the album in 36th place on their list of the "40 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time." IGN listed the album as an honorable mention on their list of the "Top 25 Metal Albums." Chad Bowar of About.com named the album the 8th best heavy metal album of 1992 and went on to write that Blues for the Red Sun, "was a landmark album that influenced a lot of bands." MusicRadar included the album on "The 50 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time" and ranked it in 48th place.