A Black Mile to the Surface

Commercial performance

A Black Mile to the Surface was a moderate commercial success for the band. It debuted the album at number thirty-three on the main Billboard 200. The album also entered the Billboard Alternative Albums chart at number five as well as the Billboard Rock Albums chart at number seven. Overall, this marked a slight drop in success compared to its predecessors Simple Math (2011) and Cope (2014), which reached number twenty-one and number thirteen on the main Billboard respectively.^[3]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	79/100[4]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Alternative Press	[5]
The A.V. Club	C[6]
Exclaim!	[7]
The Guardian	[8]
Paste	7.7/10[9]
PopMatters	[10]
Sputnikmusic	4.8/5[11]

A Black Mile to the Surface was well received by contemporary critics upon release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 79, based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally positive reviews".^[4]

In a four-and-a-half stars out of five review for Alternative Press, Brian Shultz proclaimed "Here, Manchester Orchestra forge a newly lush, cinematic sound, unraveling detailed tales of characters with abstractly personal references. Layers upon layers, from acoustic guitars to programmed beats, create a gorgeous and restrained, immersive landscape, culminating in beautifully serene moments like “The Alien” and “The Sunshine."^[5] Adam Feibel of Exclaim! praised the album's "sonic story arc — a story about love, marriage, fatherhood and life's constant way onward — complete with an introduction, rising action, climax and falling action that finally wind down to a conclusive, satisfying end."^[7] PopMatters writer Chris Ingalls remarked that the album's sound "doesn’t derive from the airtight punk influences of decades past; rather, there’s an anthemic, widescreen feel to nearly every song ... inviting comparisons to altruistic, mid-period U2, or even Coldplay."^[10]

While the album mainly received positive reviews in most publications, there were also a number of critics less impressed by it. The A.V. Club writer Randall Colbourn was amongst the most vocal in their critique, claiming "Hull has said the band’s initial intent was to “strip back” with this album, but they seem to have gone in the opposite direction—with all the layering, samples, and shout-alongs, A Black Mile To The Surface is bombastic to the point of exhaustion."^[6] Carl Purvis was also critical of the album in his review for No Ripcord, writing that "For a band where constructing songs into rocket-fueled crescendos is their biggest strength, too often does A Black Mile to the Surface fail to take advantage of any momentum it builds, often taking the wrong fork on an ascent to a splendid finale."^[12]