My Musical Journey

[TripleB333]

This will be the beginning of my music diary thread where I explore the albums I listed in my new members post, as well as any I discover along the way/happen to end up listening to.

I’m going to start with The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me by Brand New. To be honest, I started out hopeful and excited for this album. I enjoyed Sowing Season (Yeah) and Millstone, as the music matched the tone of the songs perfectly, even if the lyrics were a bit muddled (this would be an issue throughout). Jesus Christ is where I felt the album hit its stride, which lasted through Welcome to Bangkok. Not the Sun and Luca were bright spots in the relatively meh second half. Re-reading the lyrics, I really wish I could’ve heard them more-what could’ve been a very intimate and emotional album was made worse purely by the rock instrumentals drowning the vocalist out. The poetry of the lyrics was fantastic regardless, with the religious symbolism hitting its mark-but only if you take the time to read them. That’s not to say that the instrumentals were bad, however-they were great. I just wish I hadn’t gotten a headache straining to pick out the words out of the heavy guitar.

Even though I hate ratings systems, I suppose I’ll be using a 1-10 scale for this thread. This album deserves around an 8 to me (with a 5 being average). I’m putting it there instead of lower like I’d like to because I suspect my biases as a vocalist are making me dislike the treatment of the lyrics in regards to the overall sound. This rating is mostly about how much I enjoyed it, but is also loosely tied to how good I think it was (see justification for rating it higher than I initially wanted to). I would not re-listen to the whole album, though. Just a few select songs.