- “The string-swooning ‘Monsters’ is a fine intro, not only to the album but to Ben Salisbury, the BBC composer, who creates a whole new gravitas to the band. ‘Anne’ then breaks it down with a funky rhythm and Magical Mystery styled vocal.”
Bowlegs Modern Music Reviews - “Return to the Ugly Side has a wide-screen scope, with ominous orchestral swells (courtesy of noted BBC composer Ben Salisbury) and thundering drum breaks that give Malachai a heretofore unheard force and sinister majesty…”
Pitchfork - “The opener ‘Monsters’ is great, like DJ Shadow – now he wasn’t from Bristol – and includes that sampled drum sound that says, ‘I don’t care that you know this is a sample, deal with it, every cymbal sounds exactly the same and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.”
Muso’s Guide - “And the orchestration of opening number Monsters doesn’t disappoint; strings saw like the scary bit in Jaws, the tune hovers in splendid suspense and then a nice fat drum kit kicks in.”
The Skinny - “‘Monsters’, ‘Monster’, and ‘Snake Eyes’ feel as though they should soar in accompaniment to action on the silver screen.”
Highbrows.ie - “Mind you, they’ve enlisted the services of their own Anne Dudley, composer Ben Salisbury, who until now was most famous for soundtracking a host of BBC wildlife programmes but here adds drama to a different breed of animal antics. Overture ‘Monsters’ conjures dark alley tension with Salisbury’s sick (nauseous not nang) strings, and its later reprise ‘Monster’ weaves machine gun drums and chilling bass around those same strings, nastily underscoring the lines, “I don’t want to be the monster/I don’t want to be the one you run from/I should be who you run to”. Any listener would have second thoughts about that.”
This is Fake DIY - “Their watery trip-hop is more placid, and more Portishead-y than ever (check the gorgeously warped interlude Snake Eyes)”
Music OHM - “Opener ‘Monsters’ mashes several songs into one, somehow managing to meld trip-hop, experimental electronica and sweeping orchestral sounds seamlessly. It sets the tone – and the bar – for the album as a whole.”
Whisperinandhollerin - “You’d be pushed to find a more self assured introduction to an album than Malachai’s ‘Monsters’. Swelling with a regal crescendo of horns and strings, the thing sounds more like the score to a Michael Bay movie than anything else.”
Drowned In Sound - “This mentioned grandness is instantly apparent in ‘Monsters’ the introduction of Return to the Ugly Side. The stringed sequence has a cinematic emotion evoking quality, with the percussion led industrial sounds helping to break up its purity. They then reference one of the most chilling string sequences ever put to film in the Jaws like string stabs that flow out in to a plateau for the album to spring off.”
rockfeedback.com - “With the epic, Inception soundtrack-like tracks of “Monsters” and “Monster” dividing the record into halves, Return lazes in stoner-rock meets trip-hop and does it in hypnotic style. …The second half does have its own moments of triumph, especially in the beautifully smooth and soothing “Snake Eyes,” itself reminiscent of some of the greater soundtrack moments from Thomas Newman.”
Treble - “An Industrial approach provides an opening of the grandest scale as out of nowhere we’re greeted by what I can only describe as a film score that would make Hans Zimmer proud.”
Planet Notion