“As far as the actual musical experience of the record, I really hope that it is a rollercoaster,” Amigo the Devil, the nom de plume of artist Danny Kiranos, tells Apple Music. “And I hope it's somewhat confusing.” Confusing listeners isn’t a typical goal for a musician, but Kiranos’ music is anything but typical. Following two albums in 2018—Volume 1 and Everything Is Fine—Born Against takes the dark, imagistic tendencies of Kiranos’ earlier work and fine-tunes it with an eye toward asking big questions alongside minimal, often unorthodox instrumentation. “I hope that the album really allows people to realize, ‘All right, it's okay to question things,’ that blind faith might not be the best vessel to be a true believer.” Below, Amigo the Devil walks Apple Music through several of Born Against’s key tracks.
“Quiet as a Rat”
“When it began, it was a slow, fingerpicked ballad-style song about faith and doubt and all that. And to be honest, I kept playing it and playing it and it just didn't sound like it fit the actual concept that I was trying to portray there, the emotive nature of it. I figured it needed to be more cut and dry, and just, ‘Here's the imagery. Here's the question.’ And I think it ended up being one of my personal favorites on the record, only because it does have that inquisitive, almost whimsical sonic palette with these really, really dark, fable-based tales, essentially.”
“Murder at the Bingo Hall”
“We sat down at the end of it and we go, ‘All right, let's try something weird. Let's pull back everything and leave three instruments, whatever is necessary, only what is absolutely necessary.’ And so it ended up being the acoustic that you hear, the organ on top of it, the drums. And to be sure, there is a little bit of piano in there. But for the most part, it is just those three instruments.”
“Better Ways to Fry a Fish”
“So, the song right before it, ‘Drop for Every Hour,’ is the original concept of ‘Better Ways to Fry a Fish.’ Those two are linked, essentially. And when I was writing the original ‘Better Ways,’ which became ‘Drop for Every Hour,’ how I felt about it, it was too fun of a title to use for such a serious-esque song. So I ended up cutting up all of the graphic nature of ‘Drop for Every Hour,’ keeping the emotional aspect of the storyline. Then, ‘Better Ways to Fry a Fish’ ended up being almost this old TV show/Bob Wills-esque homage that is the physical aspect of the ‘Drop for Every Hour’ story. And I wish it was a little longer, because I ended up really liking how it sounded.”
“Another Man’s Grave”
“There are two songs on the record that are very, very explicitly personal, where there's no external narrative. They're very much a ‘this is how I feel’ kind of thing. ‘Another Man's Grave’ is one of them. And the first demo I had of that was the same exact guitar melody, same picking pattern, except the instrumentation behind it was a lot darker. And I wanted to have a little bit of a hopeful sound to it, a little bit of an uplifting nature, which is where the bells and things like that came into play.”
“24K Casket”
“So that Lamborghini line [‘It seems a lot more comfortable to cry in a Lamborghini’] is actually something my mom used to tell me when I was growing up. She was always very, very supportive of music, but anytime I wanted to do something that was just not going to advance my life, and I'd be like, ‘I don't care about money, blah, blah, blah,’ she would always throw that line out, in Spanish, of course. Her version was a Ferrari, but in the song we swapped it out because ‘Lamborghini’ made more sense.”
“Letter From Death Row”
“That was definitely one of those sitting-there-staring-off-into-the-nothingness moments, just going down the spiral, wondering about humanity and all that. With a huge rise in serial-killer culture on Netflix and all that, there's an intrigue for people who have a lack of empathy or a lack of social acceptance, a lack of humanity. How would a person that's about to die on death row respond to still being in love with someone? Whether they loved them back or whether that connection is reciprocated or one-way, it doesn't really matter. I started asking myself those questions and then I tried my best to put myself in those shoes, not that I think anyone ever can unless you're there.”