The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste is the fourth studio album by American industrial metal band Ministry, released on November 14, 1989, by Sire Records.

The music took a more hardcore, aggressively guitar-driven direction, with Jourgensen inspired by Stormtroopers of Death and Rigor Mortis to add thrash metal guitars to the album and subsequent Ministry releases.

[3] As with most of Ministry's work, the album's lyrics deal mainly with political corruption, cultural violence, environmental degradation, nuclear war, drug addiction, and insanity.

Connelly compared it to exquisite corpse, a Surrealist technique in which an artistic work is created collaboratively without any of the participants having knowledge of the others' contribution.

[4]: 56 The female spoken word part of "Dream Song" is a recorded conversation with Angelina Lukacin, Jourgensen's future, and now ex-, wife.

According to Connelly, the album art was inspired by a television program Jourgensen saw where migraine sufferers painted images of their pain.

[21] In rating it 4.5/5 stars, AllMusic reviewer Marc van der Pol described it as a "wonderful album" that avoids the clichés common to industrial rock.

[12] Bill Wyman of the Chicago Tribune rated it 3/4 stars and called it Ministry's "best-sounding, most assured and consistent album".