It's difficult to review a band like Jade Trees Weeping. It's obvious that their hearts are in the right place and the band truly cares about ministering to people through their music. However, we might as well just let the truth out of the barrel right now: the music sounds bad. It's not just because the band has thrown themselves into the wildly overpopulated genre of progressive rock clones that I say this. The music sounds bad based on the fact that it takes a strong feat of willpower (or the responsibility of having to write a review) to listen to the whole CD. The sound quality is rough, the instruments just don't go anywhere. Even the parts that are supposed to be catchy come off more as annoying. Jade Trees Weeping does have two bright spots on the album. The lyrics are fairly well written and the insert booklet is well-designed. In fact, just looking at the lyric booklet before putting the CD in the player, I was expecting good things from the band. Less than a minute of music dispelled this thought, however. If the band really wants to go somewhere with Jade Trees Weeping, they need to seriously look at changing the music--a lot.
1.5 tocks
