Fantastic Wounds - Reception

Reception

Exclaim! critic Sam Sutherland felt that the band had successfully progressed from their debut album, musing "more polished than their debut, this record possesses all the angular riffs and math-rock breakdowns of their previous work, but is greatly aided by a sense of cohesion between their colliding influences and disparate style of songwriting", describing the album "as fantastic as its title suggests." Ernest Simpson of TrebleZine called Donnelly the Seattle-based Karen O, and wrote that "don't be surprised if Schoolyard Heroes leap to a major or at least a larger indie label after the success of Fantastic Wounds." Roger Holland of PopMatters viewed that the band had begun as a juvenile pop-punk with only a few unique ideas, calling Fantastic Wounds a "thing of pure kinetic beauty". According to Holland, the album was "polished, perfected and just generally worked up into something quiet shiny and special. On the debut, the influences were everywhere, suffocating the spark. But the new songs, with names like “Panic in the Year Zero”, “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” and “The Girl Who Was Born Without a Face” are confident, complex and strong enough to give this young band its own fierce identity."

Seattle Weekly critic Michaelangelo Matos viewed that while Donnelly was the standout of the album, stating that the band was "neither a rock Diamanda nor a mere hood ornament; Schoolyard Heroes' ghastly gestalt feeds on at least four entities", and that the album was launched by a triplet-driven solo performance by Jonah Bergman. Decoy's music Brandon Carter compared the band favorably to a train wreck, commenting that the band could be viewed "in the same fashion as a train wreck you just can’t bring yourself to look away, for fear that you might miss something", continuing that "however, what you’d miss if you turned away from this band is a fearsome onslaught of shrieks, screams, and raw energy." Steven Bishop of Hybrid Magazine reported that style-wise the band was not be for everyone, commenting that |but for those select few who appreciate the movement and atmosphere created here, they will find a technically judicious band that leads with good hooks and follows through with great substance to create an album that is wholly worth it, back to front."

Jessica Grose of Spin viewed that Donnelly seems "to be lobbying for goth poster girl of the new millennium", stating that the album successfully bordered on both metal and punk influences. Three Imaginary Girls mused that Fantastic Wounds maintained the "acrobatic inter-instrumental dynamics and savagely clever, at times genuinely affecting modern-life-as-horror-movie lyrics that defined their awesome debut, The Funeral Sciences", and noted that it "lacks a bit in the insouciant exuberance displayed by its predecessor." The same website later listed the album amongst their 100 best albums of the year at number 18. While not charting on any music charts, the album was a commercial success, selling 1500 copies in its first week of release.