Songfacts®:

• Slayer guitarist Kerry King explained the song's inspiration to Rolling Stone: "We were touring Europe and we had a three-hour ride in some f--king minivan, and I'm just miserable in the backseat, not into anything. So I just started jotting down hateful thoughts. It's about a dude who wakes up at a crime scene and realizes he's killed everybody. It's really cool."
• The song was released as a single as part of Record Store Day on April 18, 2015 as a limited-edition (only 5000 copies worldwide), seven-inch vinyl picture disc. The track was accompanied by a live recording of "Black Magic", from the band's 1983 album Show No Mercy, which was recorded live at the 2014 Wacken Open Air festival.
• Speaking with the Artisan News Service, Kerry King expanded on the lyrical inspiration for the song, explaining that it came from a series of unrelated incidents. Said King: "When you go do festivals in Europe… and I've been doing this a long, long time, and I still think they take darts and shoot it in the map. And so you're going here, you're going here, you're flying three flights to get here, and after you get your luggage, you've got a plane [to catch] in a hour. Just horrible, horrible ways to try to do what you've gotta do, what people have paid to see, and you wanna give them a show. But, motherf---er, it's tough."
  
  "So this one place… let's say we're in Munich. The festival's three hours out of town. So we're staying in Munich. We get in a passenger van in Europe, which is smaller than ours, which… they're all uncomfortable. But we're in there, and I'm just [expletive]. I had enough of traveling that day, and I'm just in the backseat just thinking hateful thoughts. I said, 'I should write down some lyrics.' So I got out my phone. I've got lots of lyrics in my phone. And I wrote pretty much ninety percent of 'When The Stillness Comes'… not knowing… It had no title. It just starts as it starts in the song… I like to think of my songs as little screenplays; they're very visual. And I just went with it."
  
  "And when it came time to make that song, I realized those lyrics fit the verses, so I basically just had to make up the part… the last thing Tom [Araya, bass/vocals] sings. And 'When The Stillness Comes', my wife, who's hateful too, she had a road rage moment or something, and she said something, I don't know… Something came out of her mouth, like, 'I'll kill you 'till the stillness comes.' And I'm, like, 'I've gotta use that.'"
• Kerry King told Artist Direct that he tries to make his lyrics very visual. He explained: "On 'When The Stillness Comes,' you feel like you're in that room. That's not an easy thing to do. I don't set out to do that. It just comes out that way."
  
  "I want people when they hear the songs, if they bother to know the lyrics, to feel like they're in there. Whatever's happening in that song, I want they to be like they're living it. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's a very dynamic thing."