Brand New
The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me

Release Date: 2006 | Tracklist

Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face, one that I've seen depicted and portrayed everywhere, from the Vatican in Rome to the private school where I received my primary education, as a Hollywood-like celebrity of literal glowing beauty with lush flowing locks of hair, whose character is typically wearing a robe ever so gently gracing the ground. It's with disappointment that upon entering my adolescence I learned that the most astute researchers of the Christian faith actually have little evidence to back up the accuracy of these portraits. The version of Christ that I had grown up with as a child had suddenly been lost to me, and in more ways one. With my increasing age came the presence of many more outside influences to distract me. The line between good and bad began to blur, one veil was replaced with another, so to speak, and a war began to rage on the inside of my being: two polar opposites converged upon each other, both seemingly equal in their strength, where once before one had clearly ruled the day.


Like I and so many others, Jesse Lacey seemingly found himself in a very like situation after having left South Shore Christian School. This feeling of insecurity with one's faith, born of outside influences and inward doubt, is the crux of Brand New's The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. It's an album that defines the unsteady spiritual state of many of Christ's followers, but is not strictly limited to those listeners in its appeal. The analogy of the Devil and God being at war can be extended and shifted to the polar combating ends of different philosophies and various other religions just take your pick from which conflict(s) to identify with. Above all, Lacey's appeal as a songwriter comes in his blatant honesty, seemingly removed from pride and arrogance, able to come down to our level like many of the legendary songwriters and just share with us in our uncertainties. The band act as spokesmen for our stasis of rabbit-like terror; truly, there are few things more frightening to human beings than when realizing that everything is not in our control and when our core security, upon which many base their lives, is put into question.


This is why The Devil and God is an album that defines the decade, placing so high on our collaborative best-of lists everywhere: it illustrates with sound where so many of us are in our lives, that turning point of picking a side or standing in the middle of the war undecided, between whatever or whomever the forces may be. It is not the most accessible of Brand New's discography, though by its nature it's probably best that it is not. The Devil and God is a weighted listen, fully involving, taking from our emotions unrelentingly and hitting on the doubt that most of us generally like to keep hidden. You'll find that Lacey is careful to keep his targets on rotation, never exclusively pointing the finger at God, His believers, or even himself. If anything, this just solidifies the theme of uncertainty that Brand New entangle the album in. There's no one directly responsible anymore; it's a war now, and all you can do is get out of the way and wait for it to end, pick a side, or pretend it's not even real. Whichever way you choose, The Devil and God stands as a gateway to the conflict, a buffer, a pillow even, and a reminder that not everything is certain, especially the very foundations of which that many of us build our lives upon.

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4.4 superb

Rank: #1 for 2006