This review says it best: "The best rock and roll is poetry in motion, with or without words, and some of the best records of the year came without.  The Mermen play an extreme brand of surf music; the trebly turbulent and black minor chord moods of guitarist Jim Thomas are like a rough ride on the icy seas of the mid-Atlantic.  Hints of Dick Dale filter through the cracked sidewalk wave forms of Sonic Youth.  Thomas sounds more like Neil Young at the wheel of the good ship Crazy Horse."

--David Fricke, Rolling Stone