Brand New released The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me in the United States on November 21, 2006, through Interscope Records. Their third studio album and major-label debut arrived after nine unfinished demos had leaked online earlier that year. Re-recorded versions of “Sowing Season” and “Luca” made the finished album, but several other songs were left behind.
For vocalist and guitarist Jesse Lacey, the leak changed his relationship with work he hadn’t finished. In a 2006 interview with the band’s street team, reproduced by Driven Far Off, he explained that hearing those recordings circulate had made him feel he needed to write replacements. By the time the album was complete, he regretted that response. “This record already feels incomplete to me without those tracks and probably will forever,” he said.
There were practical setbacks in the studio, too. The band had begun working with Dennis Herring, but time and budget pressures forced them to leave, Lacey told Allschools. Returning home brought them back to Mike Sapone, whose nearby basement studio gave them a familiar place to experiment. Lacey described their relationship as closer to having another band member than an outside producer. Brand New ultimately shared the production credit with Sapone. The two recording environments also gave them different ways to shape the guitars. In a July 2007 interview with EQ, Lacey said they had wanted the album to be “loud and noisy.” Much of the basic tracking took place at Long View in Massachusetts, followed by overdubs at Sapone’s studio. Engineer Claudius Mittendorfer described using Long View’s rooms to capture space around the instruments, then experimenting with guitars recorded directly into the equipment in the basement for a more abrasive, immediate sound. Vocal recording required a similar range: separate microphones suited Lacey’s quieter delivery and the passages where he screamed.
“Degausser” came together with all four members writing spontaneously in the same room, something Lacey said they hadn’t done before. Guitarist Vincent Accardi wrote both the lyrics and music for the closing “Handcuffs.” The album’s development included that kind of collective discovery alongside songs shaped by an individual writer.
The questions running through “Jesus Christ” had roots in Lacey’s upbringing. He told Allschools he had grown up in a Christian household and was sometimes surprised by how often God, heaven and the afterlife appeared when he read his own lyrics back. Writing gave him a way to articulate questions he hadn’t otherwise been able to express. He also connected the record’s sadness to deaths among friends and family during the band’s time at home. For him, these sessions made the idea of songwriting as therapy feel tangible.
The unfinished songs eventually received releases of their own. In December 2015, Brand New issued the nine-track Leaked Demos 2006 on cassette through their Procrastinate! Music Traitors label, as Punktastic reported at the time. The release preserved the earlier versions of “Sowing Season” and “Luca” alongside material that had missed the album. They returned to that material again in 2016 with 3 Demos, Reworked. The six-track EP paired new recordings of “Brother’s Song,” “Missing You” and “1996” with their demo versions, putting the early ideas and later arrangements together on one release.
