Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	79/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Entertainment Weekly	B
The Guardian
Los Angeles Times
NME	9/10
Pitchfork Media	6.9/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Uncut

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is the eleventh studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was released on 22 November 2004 on Island Records and Interscope Records. Much like their previous album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb exhibits a more mainstream rock sound after the band experimented with alternative rock and dance music in the 1990s. The album was produced by Steve Lillywhite, with additional production from Flood, Jacknife Lee, Nellee Hooper, Chris Thomas, Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Carl Glanville.

U2 lead singer Bono described the album as "our first rock album. It's taken us twenty years or whatever it is, but this is our first rock album." Although not a concept album in the traditional sense, most of the music on the record deals with the world at a crossroads of its existence. Love and war, peace and harmony, and approaching death are themes of the album.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and its singles won all nine Grammy Awards for which they were nominated (U2 themselves were awarded eight out of the nine). The album also was the fourth-highest-selling album of 2004, with over 10 million copies sold, and it yielded several successful singles in "Vertigo", "City of Blinding Lights" and "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own". The album was also included in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Best Albums of the Decade" at number 68.

...
Wikipedia