Bad Omens released the single “The Death of Peace of Mind” through Sumerian Records on November 9, 2021. It introduced their third studio album of the same name with a song that had started as an exercise in making music without instruments. Before the finished recording had guitars or a polished arrangement, its foundation was a collection of sounds captured around the house.
The experiment grew out of an abrupt stop. Bad Omens’ first headline tour was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, sending them home with unexpected time to work. In an August 2022 interview with Bringin’ It Backwards, Noah Sebastian recalled suggesting a challenge to his producer friends: build a song without using musical instruments. Nobody else took it up, he said. He kept going anyway, using a portable recorder to collect sounds that could become percussion, bass and melody.
In his Kerrang! track-by-track account, Sebastian described hitting pillows, shaking keys and tuning a vacuum cleaner recording to C. The writing followed the samples. He repeated sections of the instrumental and improvised vocal sounds over them, gradually finding words inside the melodies. That gave the lyrics a connection to the mood of the track before the final arrangement existed.
Guitarist Joakim Karlsson then helped turn that sketch into a Bad Omens recording. Sebastian told Alternative Press that Karlsson combined the original sounds with higher-quality samples in a new production. For Sebastian, the useful discovery was “writing vocals around instrumentals that don’t really sound like a band at all.” It let him find a melody before deciding how the band should frame it. The approach also suited a change in his confidence as a singer. He described previously burying his voice beneath production and layers, then becoming willing to let it occupy more exposed space. He even considered moving some of the more beat-driven material into a solo project before deciding it belonged within Bad Omens.
The experiment also changed what Sebastian listened for in a song. In the Bringin’ It Backwards interview, he described judging melodies and chords independently of the instruments surrounding them. He could imagine a vocal line over piano or in another genre, then work out how to make the arrangement fit Bad Omens. That thinking allowed him to concentrate on the first musical idea that caught his ear and leave decisions about distorted guitars and live drums until later.
Sebastian and Karlsson shared writing and production credits on “The Death of Peace of Mind,” with Zakk Cervini mixing and mastering. The finished track moves from restrained singing and an electronic pulse into a heavier closing passage, letting Sebastian’s harsher delivery arrive after the melody has established itself. Its gradual escalation makes the original experiment relevant beyond the unusual equipment: the arrangement leaves room for the vocal to guide the song’s movement.
Sebastian told Alternative Press that the album title fit because each song addressed a loss of peace of mind in some form. The title track placed that conflict within an intimate relationship, supplying a name that connected its personal tension to the wider record.
The album The Death of Peace of Mind followed on February 25, 2022. The title track’s reach continued beyond that initial release campaign: Theprp reported that it received RIAA gold certification in the United States on January 11, 2024.
