Spin wrote: "Calcifying their trademark lounge leer into a dead-eyed glare, singer-guitarists Nash Kato and Ed 'King' Roeser ply curdled Bad Company riffs and a seedy, confessional air, serving up shit cocktails to anyone foolish enough to swallow ’90s nostalgia."[7]The A.V. Club wrote that the band "keeps the Nuge-style riffage on Rock & Roll Submarine rooted in the realities of basement-show grime, tamping down the old stadium-ruling ambitions with wanton sloppiness and purposefully duller hooks."[8]The Washington Post wrote that if the album "displays less attitude than Urge’s ’90s work, that’s probably because [Eddie] Roeser has gradually supplanted the flashier [Nash] Kato as the principal songwriter."[9]The New Yorker thought that the Urge Overkill of Rock & Roll Submarine "offers a more raw sound, but with tightly arranged and raspingly sung anthems."[10]