Brand New- The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me

Brand New is sort of a strange case study of a band. Their label debut Your Favorite Weapon is a mediocre example of what can happen when a band takes pop-punk sensibilities and attempts to take them seriously. While Your Favorite Weapon is by no means a bad album, it’s really not worth more than one listen. The obvious emotion that Jesse Lacey and crew carry within their lyrics really could not be expressed in such a musical format. So the band adapted.

2003’s Deja Entendu saw a much altered Brand New begin to at least try to come into their own. For one, the avant garde cover art transferred a new set of emotion, especially when opposed to the simplistic chess-clock cover of its predecessor. Entendu featured a wide variety of blaring guitars and occasionally screaming vocals that completely surpassed the scope of Weapon, absolutely obliterating the appearance of a group of mellow, depressed pop-punk artists. Lacey also crooned some far more interesting lyrics with themes that have not been explored by many emo songwriters afterward. Consider the despair of Sic Transit Gloria or the cynicism of Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t. Although ultimately weighted down by a few made-for-radio tracks, Entendu truly conveyed the promise that the members of Brand New had, and served as a sort of taste test for Devil and God.

Although Devil and God really doesn’t explore the same thematic material as Entendu, that does not in any way reduce the power of a listen. Relying on the tried and true emo themes of desperation and loss, Lacey’s vocals almost always serve the tinge of sadness that one expects from an album of this genre. True to its title, Devil and God also presents frequent references to the contest between Yahweh and Mephistopheles. Unlike most artists who explore religious themes, Lacey and company avoid ham-fisted moralist tendencies, instead using the battles of good and evil as a backdrop for the absolute depth of loss that is conveyed in their lyrics.

The album opens with Sowing Season, a building track that sees Lacey’s loudest, most poignant singing to date. The slow opening chords and soft vocals develop into a riff that demonstrates how much the band has changed since Weapon. Brand New is far more acutely aware of how deep their losses go, and they aren’t taking them lying down. The use of loud and soft here is some of the most effective on the album, linking the strong emotions of each and contrasting their presentations.

Sowing Season is far from the emotional center of the album, however. That honor belongs to the second (and final) single, Jesus. Lacey’s vocals open by describing the absolute fear he has of the afterlife, and comparing that to the desolation he feels for himself. The instrumental contrast here is almost as strong as Sowing Season, but it is emphasized much more strongly by the religious comparisons.

The following tracks on the album demonstrate the same loud-soft dynamic with the vocals until the almost-completely-instrumental Welcome to Bangkok. Not the Sun is a relatively fast-paced track, which doesn’t really fit the mantra of the rest of the album. Luca, the very next track, however, completely transfers the entire philosophy of Devil and God in five minutes. Lacey’s singing has never sounded more tortured than it does here, and it eventually builds to the strongest emotional crescendo on the album.

After another instrumental track (cleverly titled untitled) which has seemingly no point, the band comes it’s closest to a radio hit with The Archers Bows Have Broken. The lyrical content here is nowhere near as strong as it was earlier in the album, and this track would fit in far better in the lineup of Entendu. The second half of the album is justified finally by Handcuffs, a slowly building track with some interesting acoustic use. Handcuffs successfully closes the album with Lacey’s goals and despair still in mind, and it's definitely good enough to forgive the album’s few missteps. Devil and God is truly one of the best emo albums in recent memory.