Initial critical response to Fist of God was average. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 58, based on 122 reviews.[1] Jesse F. Keeler told Clash that he expected the mixed reception:
I expect a lot of people to not like the record, but I expect a lot more people to like the record now that we’ve reached a way bigger audience making it. It might sound like a calculated business move, but it was mainly a musical thing. We kinda knew what the reaction’d be, and we even told a lot of the kids on the message boards: ‘Well, a lot of you are gonna hate it’. It’s difficult, too, you know, because a lot of people have just discovered us, and they’re going to go on this record initially; but we didn’t want to make a record that was too ‘now’. We could have got a lot of the rappers - like The Cool Kids, Spank Rock and Kid Sister - but we tried to choose things and people that were more timeless. And, anyway, I love bad reviews, they’re my favourite things.[3]
