the LP featured a blue background on the front cover, fading to white at the bottom. It also featured a gatefold sleeve. The back cover was altered, incorporating a similar photo of ABBA to that used elsewhere in the world for the inner sleeve, and referencing tracks included in ABBA: The Movie. The inner gatefold was designed to look like an air mail envelope, similar to the style later used for Gracias Por La Música and even had a photo of ABBA incorporated into a stamp in the corner. This was the first and only time that Epic radically broke away from the standard Polar Music design for an ABBA album. The UK design for ABBA: The Album has only been re-issued on LP format once, in the 2008 european reissue. Critical reception The Album received positive reviews from music critics. Bruce Eder from AllMusic website gave the album four out of five stars and wrote that the album marked a "step forward for the group" since they "absorb and assimilate some of the influences around them, particularly the laid-back California sound of Fleetwood Mac (...) as well as some of the attributes of progressive rock" but "without compromising their essential virtues as a pop ensemble". John Rockwell from the Rolling Stone magazine, gave the album a favorable review and wrote that The Album represents an interesting departure from their past formulas like "innocently superficial lyrics, bouncy Europop music, rock energy and amplification, soaring melodies" to a more mature and intelligent record. NME wrote a short review to the album when it turned 30 years old, and wrote that the album "still sounds pleasantly nostalgic" and had "some delicious pop nuggets from their Swedish hatch". Commercial performance ABBA: The Album reached No. 1 in many territories. In the UK it debuted at the top and remained there for seven weeks, ending up as the third biggest selling album of the year (behind the movie soundtrack LPs of Saturday Night Fever and Grease). In the US it became their highest charting album during their original run, where during 1978 ABBA undertook a big promotional campaign. Due to the Cold War, Western music was actively discouraged throughout Eastern Europe at the time. Despite this, ABBA: The Album sold an unprecedented one million copies in Poland in 1977, exhausting the country's entire allocation of foreign currency. In Russia, only 200,000 copies were permitted