The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen is the debut album by the Mekons, released in 1979.

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] 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.

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.