“The Grim Reaper” was the result of the band experimenting with sampling during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to an interview with SPIN magazine, Stu said “One pandemic activity we dabbled in was trying to make music out of samples. I was doing dollar bin world music LP buying. I had to not know what it was. It had to be either one dollar or two dollars, and not in English. I was trying to figure out how to cut up samples and be creative with that. Cook and Joey and myself all fiddle around with that sort of thing, and that led to making ‘Sadie Sorceress,’ ‘The Grim Reaper’ and ‘Kepler-22b.’ Those were built out of samples that were chopped out of records we’d never heard before. They were all very fresh in that way.” The hip-hop angle came from Ambrose, however. “Ambrose has always had one foot in that world and has been super keen to pursue that with Gizz one day. That was making music out of samples, which is a piece of hip-hop culture. It just naturally evolved and the logical next step was to get some shrimp bars on there. It was a very natural thing.”
The band can be seen working on the song in the video The Making of Omnium Gatherum (starting at 19:22). It shows them working on the end of the song and cutting the synth part down to give Ambrose’s final word more space. They then jam and dance to the song while wearing Hawaiian shirts, the same ones seen in the video for “Kepler-22b.” The final track was played by Ambrose (vocals/percussion), Cavs (drums), Joey (synthesizer/bağlama) and Stu (turntable/percussion). It was mixed and produced by Stu, and recorded by Stu and Cavs.
The band teased Omnium Gatherum’s track listing on Twitter using different combinations of emojis. The song was hinted at through a grimacing face, a minus sign, a microphone, a night sky, ears of rice, and a tractor. It was guessed by @ListenerJae two days after being tweeted. It was released as part of Omnium Gatherum on April 22nd, 2022.