It’s not a secret that I love hard music. I first heard hard rock band Project 86 about six years ago on Webrock.net. They used to play the song “One-Armed Man (Play On)” in their regular rotation, and it quickly became one of my favorite songs. I acquired the album (Drawing Black Lines), which was very good, but it wasn’t until their next album, Truthless Heroes, that Project 86 became one of my favorite bands. They’ve continued to put out great albums since.

Since at least some of the members of the band are Christians, and they have been distributed by Tooth & Nail records, they are sometimes considered a “Christian band” and their discs can often be found in Christian bookstores. However, I’m not sure I would classify them as a CCM band, at least not in the traditional sense. Fortunately, they have found a following and been successful outside of the CCM market.

So, obviously, today is a big day, as their newest disc, Rival Factions, is being released. I look forward to having a copy either later today or within the next couple of days. You can check out a few of the new tracks on their myspace page, and here’s a video for “Evil (A Chorus of Resistance)”:

Since I’m on the subject of music, here are some samples of my final eMusic downloads for the month of June: