"In a typically unpredictable move, Butthole Surfers have decided to say goodbye to their more than four decades career with an album that was recorded in 1998 but shelved by Capitol Records for being insufficiently commercial/too Butthole Surfers. Being too weirdly abrasive was a problem for a label trying to shift major units in the alternative-as-mainstream ‘90s of Pearl Jam and STP, but it’s no impediment whatsoever now – quite the opposite, in fact. After the Astronaut is as good a finale as any to a determinedly wayward career, and a far better one than its predecessor, 2001’s Weird Revolution would have been. In fact, the only fly in the ointment is Weird Revolution itself, as more than half of the songs appear on both albums and those who know that album may find this one harder to love than people coming to it with no expectations. Still, it’s strong if not consistent, and how unexpectedly nice to find that the Surfers are calling it a day with the core members – Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary and King Coffey – all alive and well; who’d have thought?"

- Spectrum Culture