Pennsylvania roughnecks who've got a chemistry class and want a piece of your ass, The Reds® sometimes button their white collars at the top, yet their riff-and-organ tones are so garbagey that upon initially hearing "Self Reduction" on an AOR station (back when AOR still played such stuff) I thought some-body'd finally knocked some sense into Deep Purple's heads. So how they passed as anorexic-cravat new-wavers beats me. Rick Shaffer spits his bitter banter rapid-fire as often as not, yelping at wrongness everywhere. There's more dronehooks and less supernumerary frills and flurries here than on their later invisible-label follow-ups — "Lookout" is a seven minute tower of power that would've made these bombastically pessimist miniaturists the new Iron Butterfly if A&M would've given 'em a real shot; "Whatcha' Doin' To Me" is Jimmy Page pogoing payback on Sid's grave; and the other perturbitude is compressed but complicated, not so much "arty" as just impatient. Sorta like if Joy Division had come from a Philly suburb, instead of some stupid factory burg in Blighty.
— Chuck Eddy
(On page 130, published by Harmony Books, New York, NY)
