The music video adapts the song's "storyline" by chronicling the destruction of a secret military installation by a creature made of sound.

British costume designer Charles Knode made the masks of the sound creature and most of the video was shot in a disused military hospital in southeast London.

"[4] Before the editing of the full video could be completed, a minute-long segment was created for Top of the Pops, but the show refused to play it as they considered it to be "too violent".

[4] Upon its release, William Leith of NME described "Experiment IV" as a "slow, creeping song" and a "mood piece" which is "more reserved and wintry" than "Hounds of Love".

wrote, "Chilling, moody, beautiful... you know the kind of magical musical spell our Kate can weave, and even if you haven't been mesmerised by her yet there's every chance that this one will do the trick.

[7] Roger Morton of Record Mirror noted that Bush "sets [her] vision of a future where music is used as a weapon of destruction to another one of those nudging, understated melodies".