Rating: GREATLY RECOMMEND! Adjusting to the style may be difficult at first, it’s a little darker at points, but likely because the album is dealing with heavy issues and therefore has heavy tones.
Project 86′s new album “Picket Fence Cartel” was released on July 14, 2009. The album features a heavier musical style that long-time Project 86 fans will recognize as more similiar to albums like “Truthless Heroes.”
The album has been timely in my life as I consider the foolishness of myself apart from God. Even Godless creation primordial soup believing universists (yes i just made up that term, I think) have to believe in some theory of creation which confesses that mankind has not always simply existed, but rather comes from something outside itself. In fact the more you ponder over it, the more you realize just how contingent your everyday life is dependent upon the lives of everyone else on this planet. We are all involved with and affect each other’s lives whether we like it or not.
Anyways, I Corinthians 1-2 is a great passage where Paul basically makes us feel totally dependent upon God. The entirity of a life well lived can be summed up in dependence upon God. God doesn’t need to use anything to add to His famouness or power. He is already famous. His law is written on EVERYONE’s heart (Romans 1).
We are all slaves to our perverted dictums and passions, less someone else come in and change us. Song #6 on the album, Cement Shoes, proclaims our helplessness and utter need for something outside ourselves to find serenity, or calmness. Isaiah 9 proclaimed that there would be one called the “Prince of Peace.”
A John Hancock with the Safety Off depicts the diseased culture we dwell within. We are prisoners to our perversions. Two Glass Eyes is very Psalm-like.
It’s ironic that the album begins with a song about the Devil’s destruction and ends with questions about the truest depths of our hearts. It is a call reminiscent of Revelation. We fall on our faces to the ground to powerless. To Sand We Return seems to be a play on the biblical phrase “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (see Genesis 3:19).
Here is a quote from an article lead singer Andrew Schwab wrote that can be viewed on Relevant Magazine’s website.
To be honest, for the longest time no matter how many meaningful things were going on around me, I found no satisfaction in any of it. Because when your treasure is success for success’ sake—or when recognition is your currency—you will never find peace in the things that truly matter. And I was so busy comparing the opportunities of my own career to those around me, always sacrificing the joy of the moment because my eyes were so fixed on climbing to the next level of status.
I missed out on countless tastes of true peace because I was always bent on becoming more…important
So the question is…who do you belong to? What gives you satisfaction in life? Whose praise to you desire? Whom do you seek? Have you lost all control and given it away? Do you feel powerless? May the presence of God Almighty cause you and I to fall on our faces, and may we proclaim that He is the One I belong to. Amen.
Stirring the pot,
M@ Pink
