Although it borrows its rhyming cadences from hip-hop, Project 86 bellows its lyrics over incessantly eerie guitar riffs with all the raw power of a hungry young punk band, which leaves its eponymous debut sounding closer to the hardcore end of the emerging musical style known as rap-core. Besides its musical inclinations, though, there is also far too much turbulence in these soapbox rants to ever induce you to 'raise your hands in the air, and wave 'em like you just don't care.' The album's closing thought is "When Darkness Reigns." This climate of pitch-black blindness strongly influences Project 86's mostly gloomy lyrical perspective. Happy-happy, joy-joy, this ain't. The album oozes with a strong sense of mental claustrophobia, and statements such as "Stalemate" speak about the kind of inertia so often experienced by those who are stuck between two mutually exclusive spiritual worlds without any clue where to go next. It's as if they're just waiting for someone to shout "Checkmate! Game over." Members of Project 86 may not be a clean-cut quartet of shiny happy people, but this motley crew excels at its craft by specializing in a brand of loud and angry music; a kind perfectly suited for shouting back at the devil.