for me, Devotion is like the director's cut of one of your favorite movies. maybe a tad longer than what you expect and not entirely necessary, but full of all those extra scenes that represent an unaltered vision of one's project. definitely my preferred way to listen.
Total opposite for me. Devotion is the overly long album that feels its length. You wished they had cut it down. Vital is incredible. The Devotion exclusive songs aren’t bad, but should have just been their own EP or all put at the end as bonus tracks. Vital flows perfectly. There is no need to change a thing.
Fin Modern age (might be no.1 tbh) dance dance Nothing more (could climb) Naive Orleans Circles depraved God drugs and sex Harbinger also I don’t really think of devotion as an album. Whenever I put it on I put it on shuffle bc I like almost all of the bonus tracks as much as the rest of the record and there are enough of them that the whole thing just feels more like a playlist. Only 1 or 2 I don’t care for. Let’s take a moment to appreciate though how cool of a release that was. A long EP’s worth of new material and a live performance? Incredible. Didn’t care for the remixes.
Sidenote: I love Modern Age. A long time ago someone sold me their Vital handwritten lyrics package, the one with the Vital canvas and book and the lyrics I received were for Modern Age. Great, underrated second-to-last song.
i remember there was a brief time period where iTunes accidentally made all of the song previews from Vital public when the preorder went up, so i found a way to save them all, and i listened to that one over and over. one of their best songs.
i know lots of people try to argue for (*Fin) or Cable Car as the best song on Cities, and they're good, but hearing D.R. changed my life, haha.
Fantastic songs in their own right that are made better in the context of an album with perfect sequencing. Dismantle.Repair can be singled out for anyone to listen to at any time and it hits just as hard no matter what.
I saw Anberlin acoustic around the time DITW came out, and Stephen did an encore of Dismantle.Repair that was just him solo with a keyboard. A really special concert moment for me.
alright, best song from each album/release. here's mine: Blueprints: Glass to the Arson NTFP: Dance, Dance Cities: Dismantle.Repair. New Surrender: Disappear DITW: Depraved Vital/Devotion: Self-Starter Lowborn: Stranger Ways Silverline: Circles Convinced: Lacerate
Yeah, Dismantle.Repair. is an all timer, easily the best song on that album (and it’s a great album). I can still vividly remember hearing it for the first time on Purevolume.
people always hype it up because it's an 8 minute epic to cap off their most successful album, but there are already 4-5 other great closers around the 6-7 minute mark that do it better. that isn't to say it's a bad song though.