Robert A. Hull of
Creem wrote that "Once again on
Honi Soit – from the opening trumpet blast of "Dead or Alive" to the final pounding of the drums on "Magic & Lies" – Cale evokes the
epochal – this time as a series of battles, as a pure declaration of war. Like
Lou Reed's
Street Hassle, it's a work on which the artist finally reveals himself, concealing his tracks yet at the same time blowing his cover."
Stephen Holden of
The New York Times called the album "excellent", and described Cale as "one of the godfathers of
new-wave music, [who] has accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of reconciling the ferocity of
postpunk rock with the stateliness of European
classicism." In a retrospective review for
AllMusic, critic Mark Deming said that "
Honi Soit rivals
Fear as the most lividly uncomfortable album in Cale's catalog, and that's saying something." Lindsay Zoladz of
The New York Times called
Honi Soit a "wild
post-punk album" and wrote: "Cale's approach was so consistently ahead of its time that he was easily able to slot into various emerging genres as the decades went on.
Fear, along with his production for Patti Smith|[Patti] Smith and
the Stooges, heralded him as a godfather of
punk, while
Honi Soit proves he understood post-punk and
new wave just as intuitively." == Track listing ==