Songfacts®:

• This song is a track from Defy, Of Mice & Men's first full-length release without vocalist Austin Carlile after he left the group due to his ongoing battle with Marfan syndrome. Bassist Aaron Pauley handled lead vocals on the album and he explained to Kerrang how their former frontman's departure is reflected in this song's lyrics.
  
  "Instincts was written in Europe on our tour bus, and I'd describe the song as a heavy metal festival banger. Lyrically it's about when there's no time to question the decision you need to make. You need to follow your gut and your intuition, and for us continuing the band was very much a gut reaction. We all looked at each other after jamming and went, 'Yeah, we definitely need to do this.'"
• Pauley told Alternative Press about "Instincts":
  
  "We were supposed to do a festival called With Full Force in Germany, and it was in this giant vintage machinery graveyard kind of museum called Ferropolis. It's also on a little lake, which I read about was a microclimate, and then a couple hours before we were supposed to play, a literal hurricane, like a micro hurricane around the lake, happened. The whole festival got rained out and shut down. So the demo for that song, instrumentally, started that day."
• The Ben Anderson-directed visual consists of live footage filmed during concerts in Australia and Japan. Aaron Pauley said:
  
  "The video showcases the raw intensity that we've seen this song bring to crowds all over the world. When the idea for doing a video for the song came up, we collectively decided that the only way we could do it justice was to show this song's live power, and here it is. Turn it up, and bang your head!"