like". He first presented the band with portfolios from various illustrators, but the group did not find anything that they liked from them. Rutherford took Smith's sketchbook and spotted an abstract design initially made for a book, which featured an arrangement of torn inch-long pieces of paper from a Pantone swatch of colours with squiggly black lines. The band chose it as the cover, and Smith reproduced it in four different colour schemes with an embossed finish. The band liked all four, and thought it would have an effective presentation on shop displays. Three of the designs had a limited print, after which their label Charisma Records selected the original montage to remain in stock. Smith recalled the difficulty in persuading Genesis manager Tony Smith and staff at Charisma that "these tiny scraps of coloured paper" was to be the album's cover, but he was successful from having the group's backing and noted it became "his best paid job ever." Genesis allowed Smith to retain the copyright to his work. In a contrast to previous Genesis albums, the sleeve is absent of lyrics. Banks reasoned this to reducing the emphasis on the words, which he thought had been overdone on previous albums, in order to make them a greater part in the album's overall sound. Release Abacab was released on 18 September 1981 in the United Kingdom by Charisma Records and 24 September 1981 in the United States by Atlantic Records. It was simultaneously released in four different colour schemes. In 2007, Abacab was remastered with a new stereo and 5.1 surround sound mix and bonus features as part of the Genesis 1976–1982 box set. Critical reception In a review for Melody Maker, reporter Paul Colbert thought the album was the band's least consistent and therefore, least predictable in three years. He recognised a "heavy PC [Phil Collins] twist to the sound" on "Man on the Corner" and "No Reply at All", but "he does not have it all his own way". Colbert, however, thought Genesis had produced "a couple of Frankensteins" such as the latter half of "Abacab", which he deemed "unstructured" and "uninspired" compared to their past instrumentals. He named "Keep It Dark" and "Who Dunnit?" as "the most exciting and innovative music" the band had produced for several years, and concluded with the album is "by far more promising" than Duke or ...And Then There Were Three....