The music video for “Over the Shoulder” was directed by Peter Christopherson. According to Al Jourgensen, the director hired two kids to steal a car, then filmed it. When the band asked to film in a store, the owner refused. The director allegedly paid the same kids to break into the store and trash it, and the band asked once again. The owner, needing money to pay for cleanup, agreed. Jourgensen said, “Everything that happened in that video was criminal.”

The sole single from Twitch, “Over the Shoulder”, was released in late November 1985, and marked Ministry’s debut on Sire. The song is cited as an early example of electro-industrial, and contains multiple layers of looped synthesizer parts along with distinctive heavy drum machine pattern along with Jourgensen’s weak vocal approach, referred to by Billboard editors “as mannered as Scritti Politti heard over the telephone.” In Billboard’s “Dance Trax” column, writer Brian Chin described it as “a Bee Gees satire.”

Seymour Stein from Sire Records subsequently employed On-U Sound Records owner Adrian Sherwood as the record’s principal producer, after regarding his remix work on Depeche Mode’s 1984 singles “People Are People” and “Master and Servant”. Jourgensen, Sherwood, and Keith LeBlanc began work in Chicago in Spring 1985, before relocating in London-based Southern Studios; the later sessions were held in West Berlin at Hansa Tonstudio.