Life is serious. Love is serious. Religious struggles are very serious. And, above all, music is serious. This is the message that Brand New is trying to convey in their album, The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. And they do a good job with that message. This album is full of dour, somber songs that are seriously lacking in hooks, and really, in much of a draw. Apparently they were so focused on how serious they were about everything, they forgot to make anything interesting.

The lyrics are fairly mundane, espousing the kind of struggles with meaning and life that you expect from angsty emo singers. The whole album reflects very well the trend in the crowd of emo/screamo/post-hardcore bands toward making “statement albums” that are intended to reflect the depth of their artistry and the seriousness of their souls’ torment. And while this album might be one of the more competent examples of that trend, one has to wonder what kind of statement is being made with the lyrics “I’d drown all these crying babies if I knew that their mothers wouldn’t cry. I’d lower them down and squeeze real hard and let a piece of myself die.”

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Damon Gough, the man behind Badly Drawn Boy is not afraid to wear his influences on his sleeve. The title of his latest album, Born in the U.K. is an unabashed tribute to a man who has made a marked impression on Gough’s own artistic out put, Bruce Springsteen. However, unlike Springsteen, whose Born in the USA was a scathing critique of his country of origin; Born in the U.K. is a tender love letter to the singer’s birthplace.

This album is by far one of the most lyrically optimistic I have heard lately. While Gough does acknowledge the difficulty of life and love, he is evidently buoyed by hope in an ultimate triumph over the forces that buffet him. His relaxing folk rock takes place in a world where real love is hard work, but achievable.

Gough’s realistic view of relationships reflect the wisdom of a middle-aged man that stands in refreshing contrast to the whiny angst propagated by the pop-punk/emo bands that the name “Badly Drawn Boy” calls to mind. His album is interesting and relaxing, enjoyable for fans of folksy singer-song writers and youthful hipsters alike.

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Zombies are the most allegorical of monsters. While mildly frightening in their own right, the true horror of the zombie lies not in the slow, shuffling gait or the yawning, soulless moans, but in what that zombies represent.

In his book, World War Z, Max Brooks establishes an outbreak of the shambling undead as an allegory for all matter of contemporary ills. However, far from being as stilted as that sentence makes it sound, Brooks work manages to be personable and poignant, but never preachy.

The subtitle of this work is “An Oral History of the Zombie War.” Brooks’ usage of fictionalized interviews is a fascinating technique, and keeps the story from dragging along and getting mired in the clichés of the oft-revisited zombie genre.

His interviews manage to push across some very interesting points about the pettiness of humanity, and the horrifying reality of our inability to save ourselves. But far from being a gloomy deconstruction of human nature, Brooks leaves some hope mankind.

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It’s unfortunate that the fortunes of Brandon Boyd and company are tied so closely to the name “Incubus,” as that name conjures up images of an angry nu-metal band screeching their angst at neglectful fathers to audiences of cranky adolescents.

Boyd and company have risen above that scene with their latest album, Light Grenades. The music is still on the heavy side, and the tone far from cheerful, but this is no Junior-high bathroom stall scrawled expression of angst and frustration. This album is thirteen songs of well-crafted pop rock about that most ubiquitous of musical topics, relational frustration.

Boyd expresses hope even while venting his frustrations. The spirit of the album is summed up by this chorus from one of the catchier songs on the album, “Diamonds and Coal”: “Love isn’t perfect, even diamonds start as coal. Come on, in spite of this, we’re doing just fine, even diamonds start as coal.”

Light Grenades is an accessible album of solid if unspectacular songs, able to be enjoyed by Incubus fans and lovers of pop-rock in general.

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