Christian Metal Band Project 86 to Return As P86 Omni

Ya know, you can still love Jesus and love metal…apparently. And because of this, Project 86 was among the popular acts in Christian metal. They went into retirement a while ago, but a live video recorded yesterday (October 10) by frontman Andrew Schwab revealed his goals of resurrecting (wink wink) the band under the name P86 Omni.

The PRP did the good work of transcribing whole video, so if you can’t watch it, then scroll through the very long scripture below.

“Obviously, I announced the end of Project 86 some almost five years ago and since then have been making the stuff to go along with that cycle. The double album, ‘Omni‘, which was really fun to work on and the books. So, where are we at right now? Where are my eyes pointing for the future and how does this all play out? Well, let me first explain my decision to announce the end of Project 86. Two reasons for this: One, creatively speaking, I felt like we were chasing our tails — I was chasing my own tail personally — for a very long time. Obviously, we had some very high points early in the career.

“Uh, highlighted by Drawing Black Lines. Some other mentionable highlights, specifically ‘Wait For The Siren‘, later-stage career. Project 86. But I always felt like, especially in recent history, that the creative box that was painted for this band and for this entity was very well defined, especially by the end of album 10, which was Sheep Among Wolves.

“Early on in the career, a nü-metal/post hardcore sound and then everything after that was a bit more of a hard rock kind of thing. And I felt, I don’t know if the the word is stifled, but I felt creatively stagnant for several album cycles. Like it was getting harder and harder and harder to write new music.
You sit down to write a riff or a song and it’s like, ‘No, we did that on album 7. No, we did that on album four. No, we did that on album two.’ And it just felt stale. Plus everything related to the legacy of Project 86 — especially the old school legacy, you know there’s some, I don’t know if the word is baggage associated with that, but there’s definitely an impression in people’s minds of what that thing was.

“I was always fighting against that every step of the way, every album. We tried a lot of things. We were creatively schizophrenic along the way and I had a hankering to try some different things that weren’t really Project 86, sonically. And that came out during the album cycle —the last album cycle — on ‘Omni‘ where I said basically, screw it. I’m going to do something that’s a lot more aggressive, a lot darker, and kind of a different lyrical approach; sci-fi, cyberpunk, a more metal approach.

“So, kind of everything I wanted to do but felt like maybe wasn’t the right fit for Project and I just said, ‘Screw it. This is what I want to do.’ Along with writing a novel and doing animated music videos and live show visuals and even an ARG. These were all things that were a part of the ‘Omni‘ cycle that I never had the chance to do on the previous Project 86 album cycles, if that makes sense.

“There was kind of a creative reinvention that was very intentional and sort of me intentionally, using the same word twice, departing from the traditional Project 86 approach. And that was a very important exercise for me to feel inspired again. The other part of me sort of announcing the end of Project 86 was, just to be frank, a concern over my aging vocal cords and the traditional Schwab shout. And I talk about all this in the ‘I. Need. Truth‘ book —not to shamelessly plug, but to shamelessly plug, you guys should check out the book where I talk about all this more.

“I just felt like I would reach a certain point, having struggled with vocal injuries over the years, a vocal cord nodule that I developed 20 plus years ago on the Truthless Heroes album cycle that just the Schwab shout was going to run its course pretty soon. I had some scares along the way where I felt like my voice just wasn’t going to last anymore and I needed to do something to reinvent that.
Ironically, through the Omni album cycle, uh, I started going a lot heavier with my vocal approach. And believe it or not, that led to much less vocal fatigue live and in the studio. And it felt like a complete creative reinvention from the way that I was singing, to the visual identity, to the sonic identity uh, to the lyrical approach.

“The conclusion that I came to in the process of making Omni was one, man, if it could feel like this, I would definitely be open to doing more of this kind of stuff because this is really fun. I’m not losing my voice. I’m not stressing about it. I’m not feeling this sort of spectre or this shadow of having to live up to Drawing Black Lines or Spy Hunter or even Fall Goliath Fall. this is a brand new thing in every way.

“So maybe this is just a natural sort of reband, restart, reboot, reinvention. And that’s the conclusion I came to towards the end of the Omni cycle, or the end of recording Omni. It’s like look, I announced the end of Project 86 and I meant it, but this is something brand new. And this may seem arbitrary to all of you. But for me, I needed a complete reboot and a restart. And it what it really came down to was I’m taking some risks here, creatively to go in a new direction. A heavier, more metal, more electronic, more thematic, less overtly spiritual — but spiritual nonetheless — just in a different way, with the approach here. And if everybody likes it, then maybe this thing has legs. This idea of reinventing it.

“It turned out that people for the most part really dug the Omni stuff musically. It was pretty exciting. It was really exciting for me, which is what I needed to make more of it. But it was very exciting for a lot of you. And that was all the boxes checked for me to at least entertain the idea of going down this road again.

“What does that look like? Well, I feel like it’s still in the spirit of Project 86, but it’s kind of a brand new moniker and reinvention. So I feel like moving forward what makes the most sense is to call this thing P86 Omni and to continue the thematics, the narrative, the story, the conceptual worldbuilding that we started in Omni Part One and part two and continue that into a part three and beyond. And make every cycle contain a novel, contain a story, contain worldbuilding and contain addressing of the emerging technocratic order in the real world, our relationship with technology so to speak.

“And express my sentiments and thoughts about it in this way, in this creative expression of mankind’s sort of dark nature as he relates to innovation. So, I don’t know if all this is resonating with you guys or not. But I’m explaining the most exciting decision that I have to announce in a while here, and that is more music is coming.

“I’m officially announcing Omni Part 3 is coming down the pipe, and we’re going to start the pre-order and Patreon to support this, to raise funds for this next month. I’m just lining up a few pieces of the puzzle so that we can launch this thing as soon as possible in time for the holidays. I’m looking at November 10th right now. If everything lines up, that will be the date. It may end up being a little later. We’ll be posting a ton about this on all of our socials. Look for a trailer. Look for visuals.

“What does that mean? Well, just like we’ve done on the most recent album cycles, a long lead pre-order. However, this will be a much shorter cycle. I will not be announcing a double album. It will be a single album with a book. The book will come later, probably as like a stretch goal. And we’re looking at a one-year turnaround. So, I’m giving my team basically a 9-month window from announcing this to finish producing the music.

“The goal here, I already have a lot lined up: a production team, artists, graphic artists. We’re already running with a theme. I already have an album cover concept title. I already have an outline for the book. I already have an outline for the album. I already have half the songs ideated in terms of lyrics. A lot of it is already… I’ve been working on it the last 3 months. So, it’s in motion and we’re going to hit the ground running.

“I really wanted to capitalize on the momentum that we created, the new momentum we created with Omni Part 2 and this energy and excitement I feel for this world that we’ve started to build and the thematics. And really all of this revolves around the emergence of AI and all of the fast-moving announcements that we see on a daily basis that are changing our world in terms of how we relate to one another and everything in between. How it’s going to affect our lifespans, our health, our impending merger with artificial intelligence and beyond.

“So, I’m really excited to work on this and bring it to life here in the months to come. we actually just finished a brand new song that is a Patreon exclusive for our platinum members. I know you guys are going to kill me for that, but it’s a deliverable that I needed to give that I promised to those higher tier highest tier Patreon supporters as a fruit, excuse me, of supporting this previous cycle.”