The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen
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| The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1979 | |||
| Studio | The Manor, Shipton-on-Cherwell, Oxfordshire | |||
| Genre | Post-punk | |||
| Label | Virgin | |||
| Producer | Bob Last | |||
| The Mekons chronology | ||||
| ||||
The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen is the debut album by the Mekons, released in 1979.
The music of the Mekons' debut is aggressively primitive. Most of the songs are built on one or two chords, and each is "propelled by Jon Langford's herky-jerky, somewhat arrhythmic drumming".[1]
Many lyrics are political and, like those of their friends in Gang of Four, far left, but with "a more literary approach".[1]
Album name
The album's name and cover are an allusion to the infinite monkey theorem, that states that a monkey hitting random keys on a typewriter will eventually type a text such as the works of William Shakespeare. The title almost, but not quite, reproduces the line "The quality of mercy is not strain'd," spoken by Portia in The Merchant of Venice.
Reception
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [2] |
Trouser Press wrote that the album "suffers from the screamed vocals, which obscure both the music and the left-wing lyrics: minimalism is one thing, but rank amateurism another."[3]
