"The album features all the idiosyncratic charm that Meat Puppets had become synonymous with in its tenure with SST. However, one feels like things don’t always congeal in the same way that they would on Too High to Die. There’s a lot being thrown at the wall here—the furious almost heavy-metal guitar lines of “Open Wide;” the folky, country-ish ballad “That’s How It Goes;” the subtle, harmony-filled “Whirlpool;” the honkey-tonk rave up “Six Gallon Pie”—but it doesn’t always stick. Forbidden Places is no Up on the Sun, the band’s early masterpiece of esoteric indie cowpunk-fueled abandon. But it’s also not the well-oiled ’90s masterpiece that would soon come. The band would go on to more commercial relevance with Too High to Die, playing with Nirvana, and ultimately getting subsumed into the larger alternative ’90s scene. Forbidden Places is where it started."

- Under The Radar