The foundation for "Quiet The Room" was laid two years ago when Helen Ballentine composed and recorded a song of the same name. Unlike most of SKULLCRUSHER's other songs, this one was written on the piano, her childhood's signature instrument. As Ballentine wrote the rest of the album in the summer of 2021, visions of her youth flew like bats from the attic as she walked through her Los Angeles apartment in the sweltering, stifling heat. The image of a house formed in Ballentine's mind as she merged the inner world of her songs with the outer spaces that now surrounded her. She thought a lot about her childhood in Mount Vernon, NY, which she describes as the greatest inspiration for the record. "It's like layers of tracing paper, like someone is trying to make a drawing and you're seeing the entire process," Ballentine says of the making of the album. Reviewing older home videos, she was struck by the seemingly harmless shots taken through the window of her playing the piano or walking in the garden. Hidden meanings that spilled over the edges of the images, a looming darkness that hung out of sight (her parents were fighting, on the way to a divorce, etc.). The house could no longer accommodate them all under one roof. Ballentine doesn't try to capture the oft-cited innocence of childhood on "Quiet The Room", but wants to present it in all its intense complexity. The result has become a stunning yet quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we undertake through our physical and mental realms to present ourselves to the world.