His Heart Ain’t Made of Nothing but Piss and Vinegar

“The Devil in Mexico” is a song by the band Murder by Death. The song tells a story in which the devil is sitting at a bar in a small village in Mexico, drinking the night away. A local gets pretty mad at his cocky rambling and shoots him a few times, putting him in the hospital. Satan, being pretty upset at this, swears to kill everyone in the town where he got shot. The two most interesting aspects of “The Devil in Mexico” are the voice the writer uses and the mood of the song.

One feature of the song particularly prominent is the voice the writer uses. The song is narrated by the man who shot the devil, a native of the village. As the story is set in a small village in the desert, the narrator employs language that reinforces that feeling. He uses poor grammar and phrases that would not be heard in a more educated environment, such as “Well his heart ain’t made of nothin’ but piss and vinegar” (15) and “kept sippin his shine till the mornin’ light” (8). The music also goes along with the old-west village motif. The band took the song, played on the piano, and deterred the quality of the recording to make it sound old, as one would imagine it in a black and white cowboy film. All of the techniques the writer and band utilizes give the song a sound just like one would expect to hear in an old-west saloon.

Another interesting facet of this piece is the dark and hopeless mood. The entire village is about to be put up against Satan’s wrath, a situation none would be too optimistic about. The line “he lit the fires inside your belly full of medicine and whiskey,

Lopez