Crocodiles (album) - Reception

Reception

Writing for NME in 1980 Chis Salewicz described the album as "being probably the best album this year by a British band". Reviewing the album in 1981 for Rolling Stone magazine, David Fricke awarded it four out of five stars and said when describing McCulloch's vocals, " specializes in a sort of apocalyptic brooding, combining Jim Morrison-style psychosexual yells, a flair for David Bowie-like vocal inflections and the nihilistic bark of his punk peers into a disturbing portrait of the singer as a young neurotic." He went on to say, "Behind him, gripping music swells into Doors-style dirges ('Pictures on My Wall'), PiL-like guitar dynamics ('Monkeys'), spookily evocative pop ('Rescue') and Yardbirds-cum-Elevators ravers jacked up in the New Wave manner ('Do It Clean,' 'Crocodiles')". Reviewing the 2003 remastered version for American music magazine Blender's website, reviewer Andrew Harrison also gave the album four out of five stars and said, " the Bunnymen were a pure nihilistic thrill, with Will Sergeant’s desperate, mantra-like guitar summoning up a primal night of blinking hallucinations."

Following its release, Crocodiles reached a peak of number 17 on the UK Albums Chart in July 1980. The album has since sold over 100,000 copies and the band was awarded with a gold disc for the album on 5 December 1984 by the British Phonographic Industry. In 1993, the NME listed Crocodiles at number 28 in its list of the 50 greatest albums of the 1980s. In 2006, Uncut magazine also listed the album at number 69 on its list of the 100 greatest debut albums.