Songfacts®:

• Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine wrote the lyrics for "Night Stalkers" about the 160th Battalion with the US Army, and the black-ops helicopters that go in at night. Nobody sees them coming, so the enemy doesn't escape.
• Ice-T provides additional vocals. The rapper, actor, and co-founder of heavy metal band Body Count enlisted in the United States Army in October 1977. Following basic training, Ice-T served two years with the 25th Infantry Division before receiving an honorable discharge. "I had my buddy Ice-T join me on a part in the middle of it, because Ice was a ranger for the Army," Mustaine told Jose Mangin of SiriusXM Liquid Metal. "When I asked him, I thought it would be great to have him because of his bravado and then the fact that he's got real credibility as someone who was there."
  
  Ice-T saw no action and was stationed in Hawaii where became a squad leader at Schofield Barracks. Nonetheless, he added some additional integrity to the track.
• "Night Stalkers" is a brutal song with a fast and thrashy guitar riff harking back to Megadeth's early material. Drummer Dirk Verbeuren first came up with the riff while writing with Mustaine. "The story behind that riff is that I was at Dave's house; I think it was during one of the very first times I went there to go work with him on some ideas one evening," he told VW Music. "So I just picked up his guitar and this riff just kind of came to me, and that's the riff that ended up in the song. Everybody in the band thought it was a good riff, and that we had to use it."
• Megadeth released "Night Stalkers" as the second single from The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead! on July 22, 2022. The album marks Dirk Verbeuren's studio debut with the band. "Night Stalkers" is the first song released by Megadeth where the Belgian drummer contributed towards the writing.
• The Leo Liberti-directed video is the second chapter of the Megadeth's trilogy for The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead! "Night Stalkers: Chapter II" continues the origin story of the Megadeth mascot Vic Rattlehead. Ice-T guests in the visual.
• Mustaine considers "Night Stalkers" is the fastest song Megadeth have ever done. "190 bpm – and it took a while to get working up to that speed," he told Guitar World. "The song just needed that frantic pace because Night Stalker is a secret helicopter division of the military. They fly missions at night and no one knows what they're gonna do until it happens."