with "Degausser", "Sowing Season" and "You Won't Know", Freeman stated that the album "features one of the largest progressions I have ever seen from a band... most bands don't show that sort of growth even once throughout their career, but Brand New have done it twice." Writing for AllMusic, Corey Apar called the record "dark and dense, yet accessible, a shadowy air permeating every crevice where Jesse Lacey's plaintive and often tortured lyrics aren't already residing." believing the album would give them to opportunity to break into the mainstream if they wanted to. Alternative Press highlighted how there was not a song on the album that could even be compared to material from their debut Your Favorite Weapon, whilst only "Not the Sun" and "Archers" bared any resemblance to material from Déjà Entendu believing the album to be dark, difficult, depressing and desolate, "Devil is the sound of four men hitting absolute rock bottom and desperately trying to rescue themselves through any means necessary; we as listeners are forced to hear the band suffer as a means to reach catharsis-all presumably for our edification" likening it to Modest Mouse and Radiohead's The Bends. Ben Sisario of Blender proclaimed the album to be "as creepy as it is magnificent" hailing Lacey's ability to write songs that "teeter between the gorgeously placid and the exhilaratingly hideous, Lacey leads a bipolar odyssey of blood and guts and desperate prayer". Andrew Blackie of PopMatters praised the album, calling it "certainly more mature, putting breakup and self-infliction clichés, thankfully, behind them". Accolades Commercial performance The album debuted at No. 31 on the Billboard 200, in comparison to the No. 63 debut of their prior album Deja Entendu. It sold 60,000 copies in its first week. It also peaked at No. 5 on Billboard's Digital Albums Chart. A 2014 vinyl repressing of the album led to a No. 10 peak on the August 23, 2014 edition on the Billboard Vinyl Albums chart. Legacy and influence The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me was Brand New's most critically acclaimed record until the release of Science Fiction in 2017 and was frequently considered to be their best album. During a 2012 interview, Lacey said the album "saved Brand New", calling it a "course correction" for the band's musical path. In 2016, ten years after its release, Lacey mentioned this album as a particularly important work for the