A farily unknown band hailing from San Francisco. Unfortunatley, WEAKLING has disbanded since the release of this recording. Five tracks totalling over 75 minutes, none are less than 10 minutes long and have absolotely no boring parts at all. There's no doubt WEAKLING is influenced by the early '90s Scandanavian style (old EMPEROR, DISSECTION, DARK THRONE, and maybe even old SATYRICON), but influence from both death metal (early MORBID ANGEL for example) and doom metal (imagine SKEPTICISM at twice the speed) can be heard, making this FAR from typical "Nordic" shit. One other thing is that this is more depressive and dark than all of the aforementioned bands put together (I don't reccomend a seriously depressed person listen to this!), feelings of absolute desolation and despair captivated herein (especially during the middle of the fourth track). The vocals are pure tortured screams, but with an "all over the place" style, giving a completely insane sound to them. The production is quite raw, the ONLY thing not right is that the keyboards are buried extremely low in the mix. To sum it up, ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL.

© 2000 bathym