The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is the third studio album by American rock band Brand New. It was released on November 21, 2006 through Interscope Records as the band's major label debut. The album was recorded from 2005 to 2006 on Long Island and Massachusetts with producer Mike Sapone. It arose following the online leaking of several unfinished demos that were meant to be early blueprints of the upcoming record.
Two singles from the album were released – "Sowing Season" alongside the album on November 21, 2006, and "Jesus Christ" on March 26, 2007. The album peaked at No. 31 on the Billboard 200, becoming the band's highest-charting record at the time of its release. In 2022, the album was certified Gold by the RIAA, denoting sales of over 500,000 copies in the United States alone.
The album saw Brand New fully leave behind their pop punk origins in favor of an indie rock direction. Lyrically, it was praised for the band's continued progression and maturity as songwriters by delving into darker subject matters such as existentialism, death, depression and religion.
The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me received positive reviews from critics. Publications including Pitchfork, Spin, The Los Angeles Times and Alternative Press compared the album to the work of Radiohead, and several pronounced it as one of the best albums of the decade. Its legacy grew in the years since its release, and it is now credited as one of the most important emo albums of all time by critics and fellow musicians. The band performed the album in full on a 2016 tour to commemorate the album's tenth anniversary. In June 2026, a twentieth anniversary tour for the album was announced.
Background and recording In mid-2004, after four years of regular touring and recording as Brand New, they took time off to concentrate on their personal lives and pursue other projects. At this point, the band had already written and recorded "10 or 11 songs" that they believed would form the next album. In a January 2005 interview, Lacey expressed his fear of the band having already reached their artistic peak. "I hope that Deja isn't our Loveless for anyone. That would be very upsetting for me, because that would mean that the person listening to it isn't allowing us the possibility of getting even better."
The band began the album with producer Dennis Herring in Oxford, Mississippi. Due to time and budget constraints, they decided to return to New York and hire Mike Sapone as producer instead, whose Bethpage studio was close to the band members' homes. Recording with Sapone occurred from winter 2005 to spring 2006 at Long View Farm Studios in Massachusetts as well as Cove City and Sapone's basement studio. Lacey described Sapone as "more like a fifth or sixth bandmember" than a producer, allowing the band more control and freedom to be experimental. During the recording process, all band members experienced deaths amongst their families and friends, and Lacey recalled that each of them had become a little too comfortable with the idea of a funeral. The band found that the material they wrote in 2005 sounded thematically different from their 2004 sessions, and did away with that material in favor of a clean slate.
Live guitarist Derrick Sherman who had been touring with the band for some time was also present during the recording sessions, contributing parts to all of the album's tracks. Alt URL With the initial scrapped album session from 2004 and the leaked demos in 2006, the band had written and recorded around forty tracks for the album.
As the band's first release on a major label, the band expressed hesitancy and nervousness over their increased fame. In an interview with their street team, Tierney said his biggest fear was "get[ting] too big", while Lacey's was that he was "scared of the hype" and "scared of people who never heard our band trying to sell it to people who are, you know, breathing it already."
Music executive Luke Wood of Interscope Records expressed frustration with the math rock and Slint influence on the early drafts of The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me. "I thought you were going to be like Bruce Springsteen," he told the band. Wood and Jimmy Iovine had multiple discussions with the band in order to make the album something that Interscope felt was worth releasing. On working with a major label, Lacey revealed that "external forces" made the band feel "more pressure to not progress on this album than ever before." He also admitted that "left to ourselves, we probably would have been more self-indulgent and released something that wasn’t financially in anyone’s interest. Unfortunately, our creative decisions are no longer ours to be made alone."
Leaked demos
On January 24, 2006, nine untitled demos for the album leaked onto the Internet. The band was disappointed to hear of the leak; however, they had already been performing new tracks at live shows.
Initially leaked without song titles, two of the songs would be re-recorded for the album, with two others being re-recorded and released on singles from the album. Early versions of "Sowing Season" and "Luca" (with a possible early title of "Mamas") feature on the demos, with the original recording of the latter seeing official release in the UK edition of the album as "Luca (Reprisal Version)". "Brother's Song" was reworked as "aloC-acoC" and released on the "Sowing Season" single, while the original demo featured the "Jesus Christ" single under the title "Brothers". A completed version of "(Fork and Knife)" recorded during The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me sessions was released as a standalone single in 2007.
Music writer Channing Freeman of Sputnikmusic commended the band for their reaction to the leaks, praising them for starting over and recording original tracks that showed more growth and development than the demos. "It was probably the best thing that could have happened to Brand New," he said, "because it forced them to rewrite the album with an even greater purpose and attention to detail."
Often referred to by fans as Fight Off Your Demons, the batch of leaked demos were remastered and officially released to the public on December 2, 2015 as Leaked Demos 2006, made available digitally and on cassette. On July 13, 2016, the band released 3 Demos, Reworked, an EP that consisted of re-recorded versions of "Brother's Song", "Missing You" and "1996". With that release, only one demo ("Good Man") has yet to be re-recorded; however, an extended version with new lyrics and a full band arrangement was debuted at Lacey's solo show in Nashville on March 2, 2025.
Music and influence
Vocalist and guitarist Jesse Lacey wrote lyrics for all of the album's tracks with the exception of "Handcuffs", which was written by Vincent Accardi. The tracks "Degausser" and "Sowing Season" were composed spontaneously as a band, whilst Accardi composed the music for "Handcuffs", "Not the Sun" and "Welcome to Bangkok", with Lacey writing the rest.
Death and illness became two of the main themes present on the record. In an interview Lacey commented that the band purposely immersed themselves in the loss of friends and family to channel it into their songwriting and expel it. The liner notes dedicate the album to "Robert Sherman, Red Lacey, Leo Lacey, Bill and Virginia Sherman, James McAuliffe, Rosemary Kancelerski, Frances Ambrosio, Manfred Cardone III, Sid Rosen, Seymour Lane, Michelle Lane, George Moe, Alexander Lambros, and Omir Ortega, all of whom left us between the start and completion of the record."
Lyrical content Lacey suffered from depression during the writing stage of the album due to anxiety revolving around the high expectations put upon the band following the critical success of Deja Entendu. As with previous Brand New records, he drew inspiration from popular culture and literature for his lyrics. Lacey also wrote about subjects that he would discuss with his friend Kevin Devine, with some of Lacey's lyrics directly responding to questions that Devine would ask him during writing.
The second verse to opening track "Sowing Season" is inspired by the Rudyard Kipling poem If— whilst the title of "Sowing Season" is a reference from Stephen King's novel Secret Window, Secret Garden, where the main character had written a short story of the same title. The song deals with topics such as death (as per the notable opening line of the album, "was losing all my friends, was losing them to drinking and to driving") and the desire to better oneself.
"Millstone", track two, is described by Sputnikmusic as being about "not a loss of hope but rather a loss of innocence", citing lines such as "I used to pray that God was listening / I used to make my parents proud" as examples of such. "Jesus Christ" is about "analyzing crises of faith" in a conversation with God, making references to Biblical figures such as Thomas the Apostle and Elijah. Its lyrics touch on loneliness, the validity of the afterlife and the struggle to maintain faith, influenced by Lacey's religious upbringing and his attending South Shore Christian School during his adolescence. The single's artwork pays homage to the album Goat by The Jesus Lizard.
The fourth track, "Degausser", borrows the lyric "Take apart the demon, in the attic to the left" from the Roky Erickson track "Bloody Hammer".
The fifth song on the album, "Limousine (MS Rebridge)", is about the death of 7-year-old Katie Flynn from the band's hometown of Long Island that happened on July 2, 2005. Travelling home with her family after a wedding, their limousine was hit by drunk driver Martin Heidgen, a few miles from where Lacey was living at the time, leading to the tragic decapitation of the young Flynn, whose severed head fell into her mother's arms. In the track, Lacey tells the story from various perspectives, including that of Flynn's mother, Heidgen and Flynn herself. Lacey has commented that the story particularly resonated with him as he knew people who drove drunk the week the accident took place. Producer Mike Sapone had the idea to include samples of explosions in the track, hence the subtitle "MS Rebridge", with MS being Sapone's initials. At seven minutes and forty-two seconds, it remained Brand New's longest song until 2017's "Batter Up," which is eight minutes and twenty-eight seconds long. The track's bridge repeats itself seven times as Lacey counts up, one for each year of Flynn's life. "Limousine" is often cited as Brand New's greatest song.
Writing for Louder Sound, Mischa Pearlman believed the title and lyrics of "Luca" reference the fictional character Luca Brasi of the 1972 American crime film The Godfather. "The Archers' Bows Have Broken" is described as being about people who use religion for self-serving purposes instead of the intentions of the prophets, including in politics. Its aural traits include "the sound of nihilism and religion converging, and the world burning down as a result."
Title and artwork
The name of the album came from a conversation Jesse Lacey had with a friend regarding Daniel Johnston, a musician who suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The album cover is a picture titled "Untitled #44" from Nicholas Prior's "Age of Man" collection which the band saw at an art show in New York City. Alt URL The outside of the cardboard case contains no song listings, and does not contain the name of the album or the band name anywhere but on the spine. The record company instead placed stickers on the plastic wrapping to indicate the name of the album and band, and on the UK version to indicate that it had the bonus track.