The Weak’s End

20 in 2024: The Weak's End

This is the debut album from Christian post-hardcore band Emery, released on January 27th 2004. This record combines elements of post-hardcore and screamo as well as an emphasis on mostly melodic multi-layered four part harmonies. The music is pretty dynamic and emotional, and would provide the blueprint for many artists to come henceforth. I often found myself also comparing them to Alt-Rock contemporaries Anberlin, as the clean vocals and melodies were a little similar to stuff they were doing as well.

The album starts off strong, "Walls" is a mega powerful tune with heavy metalcore-inspired riffing and a subtle but melodic keyboard melody that fits right in with everything else going on. This is by far one of the heaviest tracks, the screamed vocals are a bit amateurish sounding admittedly, but they work well for the intended effect they have. The following track is also killer, with a more concrete lyrical theme and more straightforward structure, this track is one of the catchier ones of the bunch.

Other highlights for me were "Bloodless", with a super catchy hook and one of the best instrumentals in the whole record, this song is fantastic after the rather underwhelming middle section of the record, which I will go over. The other track I really loved was "As Your Voice Fades". An emotionally heart wrenching track about the effects of the loss of a loved one, and the conflicting emotional battle within. It's powerful, and certainly one of the best tracks.

Now Emery are a Christian band, and so they will touch on topics that are relevant to their faith and the related problems they would face. It's for this reason the middle portion of the record kinda loses me. Songs like "Fractions" and "By All Accounts" are pretty great songs to listen to, but the lyrics left me cold as they are touching on some rather outdated and evangelical Christian beliefs regarding sex and marriage, and it's for this that the character in the music is having the roadbumps in his relationships he's singing about. As someone who isn't religious I couldn't help but kinda cringe at these songs, and it was because of this that my overall enjoyment of this record was weighed down just a tad. Thankfully, the end of the record was a great finisher.

"The Secret" is a pretty good end to the record, with an intense buildup and cathartic climax, it's a rather fitting conclusion to the LP.
The Weak's End is an impressive debut I'm not going to lie. The playing was strong, the songwriting was for the most part great, and aside from some iffy screamed vocals, the band felt together and in the moment when performing these songs. The album has a great flow as well, as each track ebbs and flows from one to the other pretty seamlessly. The Christian themes aside, a fantastic record and worth checking out, even 20 years later.

"Is it over?
I am fine
Thank you dearly
For your time"