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The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me - 10 Years Later
November 20, 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Brand New’s The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. A seminal record, a watershed moment in 2000s alternative rock, and my personal favorite album of all time. This year the band are celebrating the record by playing it in its entirety every night of their autumn tour. I caught the performance in Grand Rapids, but more on that later. If I am to accurately describe this live music experience, I must provide context to the significance of The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me.
The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is Brand New’s third official full-length album and was released on November 20th, 2006. Up until that point, Brand New was among the crop of mid 2000s pop punk and emo bands that dominated popular rock music at the time. New York natives themselves, they came out of the same scene that brought the world Taking Back Sunday and Saves The Day. The band’s 2 previous albums, Your Favorite Weapon and Deja Entendu were favorites within the rock and alternative community, the latter eventually would be certified gold. While Deja certainly showed a lot of growth and maturity in the band from their first record, no one could have predicted what the band would achieve on The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. Alternative Press likened them to being an American Radiohead.
The album is perhaps their most emotionally realized album to date, and was by far their darkest to that point. The title on its own should tell you what you’re in for, it’s taken from a quote by a friend of frontman Jesse Lacey regarding that friend’s battle with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. When I hear the title, I think of someone tossing in their sleep as their dreams are haunted by their guilt and anxieties that exist in their mind. Listening to this album, that’s pretty much what I got. Themes of personal vices, existentialism, love, hate, death, and religion all weave this album together. The album is heavy, and a downer for sure, but it perfectly articulates its heavy nature and bleak atmosphere in the way artists like Thom Yorke and Ian Curtis did before Brand New. For people my age that were struggling with these feelings, The Devil & God manifested what we were feeling in song, and helped us rationalize these emotions.
Fast forward 10 years and the band has only become more reclusive and their cult status has exponentially grown. Brand New went from playing rock clubs in the mid 2000s, to playing arenas and amphitheaters in 2016. Mind you, they haven’t dropped an album since 2009’s Daisy, and their press has been almost equally scarce for that same amount of time. The fact that a band can get that huge without any new music or press for nearly a decade is the greatest attribute to the significance of their music. It seems like the band recognizes that, as they decided to dedicate an entire tour to celebrating the legacy of their magnum opus.
The band brought along two young, quickly rising bands along with them, Modern Baseball and The Front Bottoms. These are two bands that on their own could sell out their own respectably sized headlining gigs, and they definitely brought their own fans. Both bands were clearly influenced by Brand New, so it made sense for them to be onto the bill, and it was cool to be able to watch Brand New’s music influence a new generation of music in front of me on stage, but Modern Baseball and Front Bottoms emulate Brand New’s earlier work more so than the music they would be playing that night. Regardless of how I felt, both bands brought their own fan base, both of which seemed very pleased.
Brand New took the stage, opening with a few fan favorites off their near equally as beloved album previous to the one they were to perform that night, Deja Entendu. Songs like “The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows” and “Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t” warmed up the crowd that was their for the opening bands by giving them a chance to get rowdy in their set before hitting them heavy handed with what was to come.
From the more upbeat cuts off Deja, Jesse Lacey transitioned by grabbing the acoustic guitar to perform one of their most somber ballads, “Play Crack The Sky,” a song about a shipwreck as a metaphor for lost love. Lacey really dug into the fans by sneaking in an extra line, “Two more years now” into the song, referencing the band’s impending breakup in 2018.
Lacey concluded the non-Devil & God portion of the set with an acoustic rendition of “Moshi Moshi,” one of the band’s most obscure songs that is rarely played live. The song originally appeared on a split EP with a band called Safety In Numbers that Brand New released between their first and 2nd album, with the acoustic rendition appearing as a B-Side during the Deja Entendu era. A real treat for the most hardcore Brand New fans, it was enough to move me to tears, and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet!
Five songs in Lacey declared, “This is The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me,” as the band came back on stage and began the album’s opener, “Sowing Season.” The atmosphere shipped was electric, and the younger Modern Baseball and Front Bottoms friends who came to get rowdy were quickly entranced and still with awe. For those who still haven’t listened to this album, it starts dark, and only descends deeper. Starting softly, “Losing all my friends, losing some to drinking, some to driving,” before kicking into that first “YEAH!” that sets the song in a new, intense trajectory. It let’s the audience know they’re in for a rollercoaster.
That tone continued through “Millstone” into “Jesus,” one of Brand New’s most famous songs. It was one of the first songs that made me fall in love with this band. To this day, I remember the first time I heard the song. It was a late weekend night, I was on my computer looking through social media, watching all my friends having fun without me, some of them who wouldn’t know eachother had I not introduced them. It’s a common situation that I’m positive near everyone has been in at some point. Still, it’s devastating. Fed up with Twitter and Facebook, I switched to listening to new music. Trying to get into Brand New at the time, I through on this song on a whim because it was popular. I heard the line, “Do you believe you’re missing out, that everything good is happening somewhere else? With nobody in your bed, the night’s hard to get through.” Never before have I heard a lyric that had directly resonated with me with that much accuracy and immediately. Hearing it live in context with the album was enough to move me, and much of the audience to tears. That’s going to happen a lot at this show.
Written By:
Johnny Athey
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11/20/2016
If you know the tracklisting of the album, then you know the three following tracks are the heaviest songs on the record emotionally. First came “Degausser.” A degausser is a tool used to demagnetize things. Jesse Lacey has said the song is titled this because the song is about, “Taking the charge off something.” The lyrics deal with insomnia, with the anxiety of an ex lover moving on with their life while he [Lacey] remains stagnant.
The next is Limousine, Brand New’s lengthiest odyssey. A near 8 minute song about the true story of a little girl who was killed by a drunk driver after a wedding. Her mother and the driver that hit them survived. The song begins from the perspective of the mother in her final moments with her daughter, before switching to the perspective of the drunk driver dealing with the guilt of what he has done. It was at this moment of the show where everyone in the audience took notice of Brand New’s true performance art. The atmosphere of The Devil and God was truly starting to sink in. The auxiliary percussion on behalf of drummers Brian Lane and Ben Homola, combined with guitarist Vin Acardi’s Brian Eno-esque soundscapes and Lacey’s painful songwriting sucked all the air out of the room.
The apex of the show was Devil and God’s halfway mark track, “You Won’t Know” for me. It’s arguably my favorite Brand New song, and it became that way mainly from seeing it performed live. The first two times I caught a Brand New live set, they closed the show with this song. Reasonably so, as the song is sort of an emo equivalent to a song like “Enter Sandman” in the way that the song ominously builds over time. It begins with an eerie, yet whistle worthy guitar pattern and Lacey commands, “Hey, hey, hey, Mr. Hangman, go get your rope.” What happens from there is a spiraling descent - a low flying panic attack, as Thom Yorke might put it.
“You Won’t Know” is seen as sort of a part II to “Limousine,” often interpreted as the drunk driver unable to cope with the guilt of killing the little girl, and preparing to commit suicide. Many view the scenario as a metaphor for Lacey’s split from his ex-girlfriend after a failed marriage proposal. In both situations, the perspective is someone who can’t deal with where their life is at in this point in time, they have no one to blame but themselves for what has happened, and they’re at such a low point that they no longer care to go on living. Yeah, I told you this album was a downer.
Hearing the song live adds a new dimension to the song. As any great live band should, they flesh the song out, add new things in to spice up the song in ways they couldn’t on the record. At six minutes, the song is already fairly lengthy, though Brand New managed to stretch it even longer without boring the audience, quite the opposite. The band jammed it out between verses, Jesse Lacey even sang “Tautou” off Deja Entendu in the middle of the song.
The rollercoaster continued through the instrumental “Welcome to Bangkok,” “Not The Sun,” and into “Luca” which has an interesting way of emulating guilt. The song is named after the Luca Brasi from the film, The Godfather. Luca was a spy for the Corleone family who was caught and drowned by the rival family. Luca is also a monstrous man, a rapist and a murderer. Lacey puts himself in Luca’s shoes during his last final moments. Lacey paints himself as this sinner drowning in his guilt. This guilt being brought on by the opening line, “When I disappear do you fear for the sister I took? When I disappear, it is clear I am up to no good.” Going back to the relationship I mentioned during “You Won’t Know,” Lacey was not trusted by his ex’s religious family, and is now thinking maybe he is as bad as they said he was. The track is especially moving live. If you haven’t listened to it on the record first, please do, I don’t want to spoil the places this song goes for you.
“The Archers Bows Have Broken” fires back at the party that deems Lacey guilty. It points out the contradictions in the way they “crucify” him. Get it, Jesus, Devil and God? Thought you readers could use a lighten in mood real quick. Anyway, the song points out the flaws in authoritative religion. The irony in how their religion encourages love toward all, yet they use their religion to be selective of who gets their love. “You’re beating with a book everyone that book tells you to love.”
I was particularly excited to hear this song live, because in the five times I’ve caught Brand New live, it’s a song I’ve always wanted to hear but never have. It did not disappoint. Alongside “Not the Sun,” it’s probably the fastest/most upbeat song on the album. It gave the audience a chance to dance again after being frozen in existential dread for so long.
The album and the concert ended with “Handcuffs.” It’s the only song solely written by Acardi on the album. It’s perhaps the darkest and most disturbing on the record, even after drowning mobsters and drunk drivers. The song is about what you would do without consequence, what you wish you could do but can’t because society deems it criminal or an atrocity. It’s about the other side of that coin, if you inflict someone damage that is inflicting damage on someone else, are you just as evil? It’s a self-check from “Archers.” The narrator is stepping back from his rant to say, “Wait a minute, am I just as evil for acting equally as hateful in retort?” The song leaves the listener asking questions after finishing the album. Are you deserving of the guilt you may be feeling? Is it better to fight, or to be peaceful? It sums up the title of the album perfectly. This is what happens when The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me.
Listening to this album is not necessarily a happy experience, but it was an important and formative one for me. It helped me understand parts of my mind I wasn’t able to yet, and I’m glad I didn’t discover it any later than I did because who knows where I’d be if I hadn’t? Seeing this record performed live in front of me 10 years after its release is a reminder of my personal growth through hectic adolescence.
