The
Associated Press called the song "a thundering rock anthem".
NME columnist
Mark Beaumont was perturbed that the band's latest track was "assimilated into something as annoying" as the Olympics. He continued that "'Survival' might be amongst the most ear-scorchingly, arse-burstingly, aneurysm-inducingly brilliant songs in Muse’s canon, but it’ll forever be deemed corny by its association with one long-past sporting event." Adam Boult of
The Guardian referred to the track as "a hilarious five-minute onslaught of camp, falling somewhere between
Queen,
Gloria Gaynor and a
Monty Python sketch. Swelling strings, battle drums, ludicrous falsetto shrieking and chugga-chugga guitar channelling the
Little Engine That Could. It's as insanely overblown as the Olympics themselves."
Jon Holmes of
BBC Radio 4's The Now Show described it as an "Epically proportioned cacophony of enormous noise" that was like "the sound of an orchestra falling down some stairs" created by "throwing a hand-grenade into a music cupboard and recording the results". He depicted the drumkit as like "the noise of a rhino knocking a wall down" and said "this is the song I want to hear when the world ends". ==Track listing==