In the winter of 2003, the band celebrated the release of its EP with a show at Montreal’s Casa del Popolo . Before a crowd packed beyond capacity, the band’s set ended (in the middle of an encore) with an argument between Butler and Reed, in which Reed quit the…
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Brand New’s debut studio album Your Favorite Weapon was produced by friend of the band Mike Sapone . The album has been described as being “bitter about ex-girlfriends”, with an excessive concentration on “post-breakup angst”. It received relatively positive reviews, with AllMusic awarding it three out of five and PopMatters…
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Brand New’s second studio album was written in the “year and-a-half or two years” that they were touring the material off of Your Favorite Weapon . According to drummer Brian Lane, “Jesse [Lacey] wrote a lot of the lyrics about different things than ‘I just broke up with my girlfriend’…
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Howard Bilerman joined the band on drums in the summer of 2003, and they began to play shows together, and record the album that would end up becoming Funeral . The promise shown by the new band in their early live shows allowed them to land a record contract with…
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Shortly after the album’s release, Blixa Bargeld left the band after 20 years to devote more time to Einstürzende Neubauten.
Keenan rejoined the sessions in early 2003, and the music began taking a different direction with the new lineup and Keenan’s influence. Beyond the new personnel, the dynamic had changed: With Mer de Noms , Howerdel had already written and finalized all of the music, with Keenan just contributing the…
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In January 2003, a posting on the band’s official Yahoo list claimed that a member of the band had left “amid massive animosity”, later elaborating that “a member of the band had quit, did not want to rejoin and the remaining members did not want him back” and that as…
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In the latter part of 2003, the band released their debut single, ” Darts of Pleasure “.
The band then released Nocturama in 2003.
2003 also saw the release of the DVD Eyes Wide Open , a compilation of the band’s shows Live at the Shepherds Bush Empire (London, 3 July 2000) and Live in Japan (Tokyo, 16 April 2003).