PHILADELPHIA -- The last time I saw the band called Brand New perform, the world -- or my world, at least -- felt just like that: new, capable, a pen scribbling on a clean sheet of paper.

It was late January 2009, and I was in college, at The College of New Jersey in Ewing. Two ground-shaking events shook the campus that week: the inauguration of President Obama, which was aired on a large projector screen and met with cheers in the student center, and the coming of a certain emo-rock band from Long Island, who were all but worshipped by much of TCNJ's student body.

Booking Brand New, darlings of the alternative scene who at this point had largely advanced beyond playing shows at small liberal arts colleges, was a sure triumph for the campus's event organizers. But in a woeful lapse of judgement, the planners chose not to sell tickets ahead of time, despite the band's popularity. Instead it was old-school: first-come, first-served -- assemble at the door, cash in hand, ready to see Brand New for a bargain $10 a head.

On a Friday in the dead of New Jersey winter, students began to line up outside, six hours before the doors to Kendall Hall would open. By dusk, the line stretched a quarter-mile across campus; kids who waited two hours in the cold never made it inside.

My roommate and I waited for five hours. We were in the fourth row; my ears rang for two days afterward. I wasn't exactly a fevered fan of the band, but it was a good show, with what would now be considered a classic set list, full of tracks from the band's revered first three albums.

We ate Burger King that night. I was 19, there was a new president whose election marked a leap in U.S. social progress -- things seemed relatively okay.

Later in 2009, Brand New would drop a polarizing, post-hardcore-tinged album in "Daisy" and then go quiet, waiting nearly eight years to release its next record.

Only in August of this year did the band officially return, with the delightfully dark new LP "Science Fiction" -- its first No. 1 album on Billboard -- and the emo, punk and alt-rock communities are once-again infatuated with Brand New.

But Brand New re-emerges in a different world, where everything certainly does not seem relatively okay. The list of horrific events that have taken place this year alone have brought out the "emo" (short for "emotional") nihilist in all of us. And who can be blamed for the doomsaying; there is no discernible end in sight to the violence and intolerance that plague our country.

Then it is perhaps fitting that Brand New's gloomiest album to date is also, for my money, the strongest rock album of 2017. Grating, downcast rock music just kind of fits right now.

It was appropriate, too, that in Philadelphia Wednesday night, 2,500 20-somethings and I, who now know too well the ugliness the world holds beyond those university campus bubbles, packed the Electric Factory venue to go absolutely wild and escape within a band that's just as upset and over all this crap as we are.

"I'm just a manic-depressive!" wailed the eternally somber frontman and millennial Morrissey, Jesse Lacey, on the telling new tune "Can't Get It Out." The sold-out crowd, who too had been lined up hours before the doors opened, shrieked the line back at the six-piece band, complete with two full drum kits and an array of effects pedals, through which guitarist Vin Accardi warped his strums into echoes and haunts.

You burnt bright but you run out I fell asleep at the incline #degausser #brandnew #electricfactory #electricfactoryphilly #goodbyeyouliar A post shared by Lauren Marie (@laur.giles) on Oct 19, 2017 at 5:05am PDT

The album "Science Fiction" itself plays like a unhinged dreamscape, with songs fit together by old recordings of psychoanalysis, and as much of the 90-minute set was focused on the new record, the night too felt clouded and intense. As Brand New first came to the stage, a semi-opaque video screen descended down in front of them, leaving the band in shadow for the eerie opener "Lit Me Up" and then fiery screamer "Gasoline," while static and lights blasted onto the screen sent the crowd into frenzy.

During the third song, a mid-tempo jammer called "Out Of Mana," the screen lifted, revealed the group and a stage that was scattered with two-dozen lamps, all blinking intermittently at the crowd. Visuals on the large back screen were unsettling: murky woods for several songs and atomic bomb testing footage for the newbie "137" and its winking hook "Let's all go play Nagasaki / we can all be vaporized."

Other than a too-early cue on the old MTV hit "Sic Transit Gloria ... Glory Fades" and a sound mix that favored bass and sometimes drowned Accardi's guitar, pulling some punch from the new tracks' guitar-dependent nuance, the band was tight; Lacey's urgent cry-singing was rounded nicely by the more polished vocal notes of Kevin Devine, a well-regarded singer-songwriter in his own right, who's currently touring with the band.

The night was light on deep cuts from early albums -- if the 2001 debut "Your Favorite Weapon" was preferred Brand New version, this wasn't the show for you -- but Lacey finished the set alone, back to that first album's closer "Soco Amaretto Lime." Compared to the complex new songs, it felt like a simple singalong, harkening back to when life was less complicated for the band, and unfortunately, for most of us, as well.

Brand New's set list

Oct. 18, 2017 - The Electric Factory, Philadelphia

"Lit Me Up"

"Gasoline"

"Out of Mana"

"You Won't Know"

"137"

"Can't Get It Out"

"Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades"

"I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light"

"You Stole"

"At the Bottom"

"In the Water"

"Same Logic/Teeth"

"451"

"Degausser"

"Jesus"

"Sowing Season" (Extended outro)

Encore:

"Soco Amaretto Lime" (Jesse solo)

Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier. Find NJ.com on Facebook.