 Newsday's Glenn Gamboa praised the band for "not reliving the past", but he found enough similarities to the band's previous releases to appeal to listeners. He considered the album successful because the band had been "reflecting their time apart and their work with Velvet Revolver and Army of Anyone." Mike Schiller, writing for PopMatters, called the album's title an appropriate fit with the band's apparent ease of writing with "obvious" influences. He described the title as, "more homage than it is subconscious plagiarism," before listing Nirvana, Aerosmith, Joy Division, John Lennon, David Bowie, and even the band's Purple as having intentionally shaped the album. Schiller decided the album was a "bonus" because, in the near-decade gap since the band's last release, "people have moved on". He concluded that Stone Temple Pilots is "a far more fitting epilogue" than the last album, before considering it, "perhaps, [the] next chapter".
