‘Well take me out tonight,
This ship of fools I’m on will sink.
I’m my own stone around my neck,
{If you’d} be my breath, there’s nothing I wouldn’t give.’
Millstone
Brand New’s third album, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, is appropriately named. It’s a concept album which grapples with the theme of inner questioning; it’s about a young man struggling with his own conscience and with the person that he has become. Faith is also a huge theme in the album and Jesse Lacey (the writer) uses Christian imagery to express this turmoil. It’s an incredibly dark album about losing faith in both God and yourself, and realising that you’ve become someone that you never wanted to be – someone that your faith taught you was an evil person.
‘Hey, hey, hey, Mr. Hangman,
You go get your rope.
Your daughters weren’t careful
And I fear that I am a slippery slope.’
You Won’t Know
Musically, the album is hard to classify. It’s a mixture of alternative rock, pop-punk, and emo, with a few indie elements thrown in for good measure. However, Brand New has a unique sound that’s worth listening to yourself before judging based on these categories. The music can be beautiful and mellow or it can be harsh with bitterness and anger. It’s nearly always dark, matching itself with the lyrical content. However, it is almost always very catchy at the same time; it’s both accessible and deep, which is an impressive feat for any creative work. The singing is also great: one interesting technique that is often used is to layer different lyrical lines over one another in harmony. (I suggest listening to Archers to get a good idea of the albums’ style.)
‘Who do you carry the torch for, my young man?
Do you believe in anything?
Do you carry it around just to burn things down?’
The Archers’ Bows Have Broken
The lyrics throughout the whole album are unrelentingly dark and emotional, and you can definitely see the emo influence there. But unlike most emo music this album is actually very mature and adult. The issues Lacey sings about are moving and come from the heart; he’s genuinely anguished by the things he has done, and his inability to stop himself from doing evil things. Perhaps the quality that sets this album apart from others – and that makes such dark lyrics believable – is the honesty that Lacey writes with. It’s not about ‘hating myself and wanting to die’, it’s about looking at yourself and realising that you are not, in fact, a good person – that, in fact, you are quite the contrary – and that you only have yourself to blame. It’s about crying out for help but not having any hope that anyone will answer. You can relate to his torment because it’s something that I think every adult goes through at some stage in their life.
‘I know you’ll come in the night like a thief
But I’ve had some time alone to hone my lying technique.
I know you think that I’m someone you can trust
But I’m scared I’ll get scared and I swear I’ll try to nail you back up.
So do you think that we could work out a Psalm?
So I’ll know it’s you and that it’s over so I won’t even try.
I know you’ll come for the people like me
But we’ve all got wood and nails,
And talk dirt at hating factories.
We’ve all got wood and nails,
And we sleep inside of this machine.’
Jesus Christ
Lacey does not shy away from lyrics that could be considered shocking, offensive or even blasphemous. He doesn’t say these things just for show though; the songs are more about his horror and despair he feels because of the things he can say and do than the things themselves. Limousine, in my opinion the best song on the album, takes this intenseness and self-loathing the furthest. The song is about a 7 year old girl, called Katie, who was travelling home after being a flower girl at a wedding, when a drunk driver crashed into the limousine she was travelling in. She was decapitated in the crash. In the song Lacey sings from two perspectives, the mother and the drunk driver, and it’s hard to say which is more moving – Lacey, I think, identifies himself with both. It’s a song that you can’t listen to without being touched by the horror of what happened. The guitar solo at the end of the song is simply incredible, and it captures perfectly the emotional intensity of the tragedy.
‘Your beauty supreme.
Yeah, you were right about me.
But can I get myself out from underneath
This guilt that will crush me?
And in the choir I saw our sad Messiah.
He was bored and tired of my laments.
Said, “I died for you one time, but never again”’
Limousine
The one ray of hope that is seen in the album comes in the second last song, Archers. Denouncing a man who preaches religion but does not live by its teaching himself, Lacey calls him ‘a voice that never sings’. Lacey is, at the very least, singing about the good and evil that are at war within him. It’s a cathartic album, and listening to it, although you are hopefully not as troubled as Lacey, is a very cathartic experience. It’s a masterpiece on every level.
Rating:5 Stars
‘What did you learn tonight?
You’re shouting so loud, you barely joyous broken thing.
You’re a voice that never sings, that’s what I say.
You are freezing over Hell,
You are bringing on the end, you do so well
you can only blame yourself, that’s what I say.’
The Archers’ Bows Have Broken
– Kevin M
The Scribbler 
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