gave you glimmers of light but never flooded you with sun; there was angst but not brutality; it possessed an uneven wilderness, which is all you'd ever want from music, something unexpected emerging from what we already know." The A.V. Club called Unwound the best band of the 90s, with Jason Heller writing:Unwound is the best band of the ’90s. Not just because of how prolific, consistent, and uncompromising it was, but because of how perfectly Unwound nested in a unique space betweenn [sic] some of the most vital forms of music that decade: punk, post-rock, indie rock, post-hardcore, slow-core, and experimental noise. That jumble of subgenres doesn’t say much; in fact, it falls far short of what Unwound truly synthesized and stood for. Unwound stood for Unwound. But in a decade where most bands were either stridently earnest or stridently ironic, Unwound wasn’t stridently anything. It was only itself. In one sense Unwound was the quietest band of the ’90s, skulking around like a nerdy terror cell. In another sense it was the loudest, sculpting raw noise into contorted visions of inner turmoil and frustration. Heavy metal magazine Decibel recognized them as an influence on bands "like Botch, Young Widows, KEN Mode, Coliseum, Helms Alee and so on and so forth." Conrad Keely of ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead named Fake Train one of 10 albums that had changed his life forever, stating that it had "epitomized America's disaffected, self-hating white middle-class guilt victims screaming about the fact that they have nothing to do with their time other than be bored, nothing to speak out against other than their own ennui and unwarranted discontent. And although that might sound like a criticism or an indictment, the fact is that this sentiment existed, it was shared by a lot of us, and it found its voice in albums like Fake Train (and Fugazi's Thirteen Songs)." Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead picked The Future of What as her favorite album of all time, calling it "absolutely timeless. When I listen to each member separately it astonishes me how gifted and original they are on their own [...] if I could only play this music to Bach or Mozart or any classical greats I think they would totally get it." Modest Mouse were recognized by many sources as being influenced by the band, and Isaac Brock's label