 The album was recorded on a shoestring budget, and was widely praised at the time of its release in the music press ("Staggering.." concluded the Melody Maker review for example) as a refreshing antidote to the drug-infused 'baggy' scene that was prevailing at the beginning of the 1990s.Whilst most of the chart contemporaries were extolling the virtues of ecstasy and hedonism, Carter USM offered a bleak worldview of social injustice, moral decay and urban violence.Their twin guitars, played over banks of keyboards, programmed sequencers and a drum-machine, drew comparisons in some critics' eyes to a 'punk Pet Shop Boys'.