Atomizer

Iain Burgess engineered the record, and Big Black always credited their drum machine, Roland, alongside the three players. Roland is a brand of drum machine, not a person. Liner notes billed Albini's guitar as skinng and Durango's as vroom. An early cover idea of Marvin the Martian aiming a raygun at the Earth was dropped over legal problems. Big Money had already appeared as the B-side of the Il Duce single, and the live Cables came from a promotional 12-inch that Homestead sold behind the band's back, which pushed Big Black to leave the label.

In Albini's words, the band simply had a higher-than-average percentage of really good songs. Robert Christgau wrote in the Village Voice in September 1986 that the band made its godawful racket out of the godawful pain of the world, and called it the brutal guitar machine thousands of lonely adolescent cowards had heard in their heads. Trouser Press said it came thundering out of the starting gate like a wounded rhino, and called it a major sourcebook for countless bands to come. Pitchfork's Jason Heller named it Big Black's best album and Albini's masterpiece, and in its Touch and Go 25 feature, which excluded reissues, Pitchfork said Atomizer, were it ranked, could have topped the list.

The compact disc compilation The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape later paired it with Headache and the Heartbeat single, minus Strange Things, and carried Albini's liner-note jibe at the format. Touch and Go announced a remastered reissue for 25 September 2015, remastered by Albini and Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering, with Strange Things included. Metal Hammer's Rich Hobson ranked it the ninth heaviest punk album of all time in 2022, and it is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.