The album included two songs previously released as singles, "Behind the Counter" and "15 Ways", although different versions of both were included on the album. A further five tracks from the album featured as B-sides across the formats of these singles, and, although most were different versions, this meant that the album only contained seven songs that were new to fans upon its release, three of which were cover versions. In addition, "Hey! Student" is a reworked version of "Hey! Fascist", which The Fall used to play live in their early days. The version of "M5" included was considered inferior to the version released on the Behind the CounterEP in 1993. The album's cover versions were less mainstream than some of their other recent choices: "War", originally by Henry Cow and Slapp Happy, "Shut Up!", originally by The Monks and a bizarre version of "Junk Man", originally by The Groundhogs. According to Daryl Easlea's sleeve notes for the 2006 reissue, Mark E. Smith prevailed upon the group to deliver the song from memory and, as a result, was backed by minimal drums, bass, kazoo and some tuneless hollering from Burns. "Symbol of Mordgan" is based upon a recording of Scanlon discussing a football match by telephone on John Peel's Saturday afternoon programme. Middle Class Revolt is, as Easlea notes, not a uniformly popular album amongst the group's fans. Nevertheless, it houses some popular tracks. Indeed, "Hey! Student" attained the number 2 position in John Peel's 1994 Festive Fifty, beaten to the top only by Inspiral Carpets' "I Want You", which featured Smith as guest vocalist.
Reception
The album received a rating of 3.5 stars out of 5 from AllMusic, with Ted Mills describing it as "a mixture of lackluster performances and songs filled with vigor and fury". the NMEs Ian McCann gave the album "7/10 by their own standards, 8/10 by everyone else's", calling the band "professionally incompetent, true punk artisans making masterpieces sound like demos". Jim Sullivan, for The Boston Globe, stated the album has "enough caustic barbs and wry witticisms snake through the dense mix to provide cerebral fun for those who like to carp along", going on to say "It's nasty, it's gleeful, it's the Fall still twisting the ironic/angry knife." Mark Jenkins, in The Washington Post, described it as "unusually smooth for an album by these veteran British post-punk eccentrics" viewing its highlights to be "its irascible mantras, notably the unusually quick-tempoed "Hey! Student" and the dense "Shut Up!"". Stereogum's Robert Ham viewed it as their "best album in at least five years".
Track listing
The album was controversial for its writing credits, in which all Fall originals were credited to Mark E. Smith, Craig Scanlon and Steve Hanley, despite some of the tracks having already been credited differently on the preceding single releases. According to drummer Simon Wolstencroft, there was "a misprint on the credits due to a cock-up at the record label".
Some CD editions erroneously list "War" as track 13, although the actual running order on CD is correct.
2006 edition
The album was remastered and reissued as an expanded two-disc set in 2006. The second disc included the group's 17th session for John Peel, alternate mixes of several album tracks previously issued on singles and a clutch of rare or previously unheard remixes. Disc one
