History Music / Weakling

* LongTitle: "Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein", "No One Can Be Called as a Man While He'll Die".

* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: Generally a high 9 or low 10. They might be lower without Gossard's tortured vocals, which are worthy of Music/{{Burzum}}.

* EpicInstrumentalOpener: "Dead as Dreams" is a magnificent example, with a gorgeous four-minute intro that is regarded by most fans as CrowningMusicOfAwesome.

Weakling was an influential BlackMetal band from San Francisco, California. While they never toured, rarely performed live at all, and only released one album, ''Dead as Dreams'' (apparently originally self-released in limited quantities on CD-R and cassette in 1999; given wide release on the [=tUMULT=] label in 2000, which is generally considered the album's official release date; ([[TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment recorded in 1998]]), their musical output became immensely influential on an entire generation of black metal bands from the United States and elsewhere, including such acts as Music/WolvesInTheThroneRoom, Music/{{Krallice}}, Music/AshBorer, Music/FellVoices, Music/{{Panopticon}}, and countless others.

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Sarah Weiner is the only female member of the band. This means they had one more female member than most black metal bands do. Sarah was also a member of The Gault, although she switched to drums for that band, whose lineup averted this trope: it featured Weiner, Gossard, bassist/vocalist Lorraine Rath, and vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn, making it, rather unusually among metal bands, a GenderEqualEnsemble instead. (Rath, for her part, later co-founded the somewhat DoomMetal-tinged {{goth|Rock}}[=/=]PostRock[=/=]{{ambient}} outfit Worm Ouroboros alongside Jessica Way; that band ''inverts'' TheSmurfettePrinciple, being a three-piece with only a male drummer. Currently, that is Aesop Dekker, also known for his work with Asunder, Music/{{Agalloch}}, and about a dozen other West Coast bands. In case you hadn't guessed yet, the Bay Area music scene's band membership is somewhat incestuous).

* BookEnds: "This Entire Fucking Battlefield" and "No One May Be Called as a Man While He'll Die" both end by reprising their opening riffs.
* DroneOfDread: How several of their songs end.

!! Most common track listing of ''Dead as Dreams''

In any case, the LP and [=N:C:U=] cassette editions both use a different track order as well. They are:

* C1. This Entire Fucking Battlefield - 14[=:=]47
* D1. Disasters in the Sun - 17[=:=]05

* SiameseTwinSongs: On the CD, "This Entire Fucking Battlefield" and "No One Can Be Called as a Man While He'll Die" are this. On the LP, "No One..." precedes "Cut Their Grain..." due to vinyl side limitations, so this does not happen.

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Sarah Weiner is the only female member of the band. This means they had one more female member than most black metal bands do. Sarah was also a member of The Gault, although she switched to drums for that band.

* SpiritualSuccessor: Dispirit, John Gossard's latest band, performs a similar post-rock-influenced strain of black metal, though there's more funeral doom influence. Since Gossard's previous band, Asunder, had been a funeral doom outfit, this probably isn't surprising. (The chronology evidently goes Weakling, then The Gault, then Asunder, then Dispirit; there may have been some overlap between The Gault and Asunder, but not as much as the 2005 release date of The Gault's sole album might lead people to expect, since it has a copyright date of 1999, indicating it was written and, probably, recorded much earlier. The Gault was essentially gloomy traditional DoomMetal with a large dose of PostPunk influence - think England's Warning - and occasional GothicMetal and death rock influence. The Gault was also somewhat unusual among metal bands for being a GenderEqualEnsemble, featuring bassist/vocalist Lorraine Rath [who later co-founded the somewhat DoomMetal-tinged {{goth|Rock}}[=/=]PostRock[=/=]{{ambient}} outfit Worm Ouroboros] alongside Gossard, Weiner, and male vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn.)

* SpiritualSuccessor: Dispirit, John Gossard's latest band, performs a similar post-rock-influenced strain of black metal, though there's more funeral doom influence. Since Gossard's previous band, Asunder, had been a funeral doom outfit, this probably isn't surprising. (The chronology evidently goes Weakling, then The Gault, then Asunder, then Dispirit; there may have been some overlap between The Gault and Asunder, but not as much as the 2005 release date of The Gault's sole album might lead people to expect, since it has a copyright date of 1999, indicating it was written and, probably, recorded much earlier. The Gault was essentially gloomy traditional DoomMetal with a large dose of PostPunk influence - think England's Warning - and occasional GothicMetal and death rock influence. The Gault was also somewhat unusual among metal bands for being a GenderEqualEnsemble, featuring bassist/vocalist Lorraine Rath [who later founded the somewhat metal-tinged PostRock outfit Worm Ouroboros] alongside Gossard, Weiner, and male vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn.)

The most commonly known release of the album is a CD edition first released through [=tUMULT=] in 2000. According to Discogs, there was a preceding CD-R edition and a preceding cassette edition self-released by the band in 1999. Neither of these earlier editions are present in other databases ([=MusicBrainz=], Metal Archives, etc.), though Discogs actually does have photos of the packaging that confirm these are different from other pressings. Despite the 1999 self-release, most sources list the album's release date as 2000. Both of the self-released editions feature the track listing used on the [=tUMULt=] CD (complete with "Desasters" spelling). [=tUMULt=] made a second print run of the CD once sometime around 2006-2007 and a third one sometime after 2010, which were mostly the same as the first [=tUMULt=] CD apart from some marking information on the CD itself.

'''Second Cassette ([=N:C:U=], 2003])'''

: A1. No One Can Be Called as a Man While He'll Die - [=13:09=]
: A2. Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein - [=10:28=]
: B1. Dead as Dreams - [=20:39=]
: C1. This Entire Fucking Battlefield - [=14:47=]
: D1. Disasters in the Sun - [=17:05=]

: A1. Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein - [=10:28=]
: A2. No One Can Be Called as a Man While He'll Die - [=13:09=]
: A3. This Entire Fucking Battlefield - [=14:47=]
: B1. Dead as Dreams - [=20:39=]
: B2. Disasters in the Sun - [=17:05=]

* SpiritualSuccessor: Dispirit, John Gossard's latest band, performs a similar post-rock-influenced strain of black metal, though there's more funeral doom influence. Since Gossard's previous band, Asunder, had been a funeral doom outfit, this probably isn't surprising. (The chronology evidently goes Weakling, then The Gault, then Asunder, then Dispirit; there may have been some overlap between The Gault and Asunder, but not as much as the 2005 release date of The Gault's sole album might lead people to expect, since it has a copyright date of 1999, indicating it was written and, probably, recorded much earlier. The Gault was essentially gloomy traditional DoomMetal with a large dose of PostPunk influence - think England's Warning - and occasional GothicMetal and death rock influence. The Gault was also somewhat unusual among metal bands for being a GenderEqualEnsemble, featuring bassist/vocalist Lorraine Rath, later of Music/WormOuroboros, alongside Gossard, Weiner, and male vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn.)

Weakling was an influential BlackMetal band from San Francisco, California. While they never toured, rarely performed live at all, and only released one album, 2000's ''Dead as Dreams'' ([[TheShelfOfMovieLanguishment recorded in 1998]]), their musical output became immensely influential on an entire generation of black metal bands from the United States and elsewhere, including such acts as Music/WolvesInTheThroneRoom, Music/{{Krallice}}, Music/AshBorer, Music/FellVoices, Music/{{Panopticon}}, and countless others.

!! Track listing of ''Dead as Dreams''

#Disasters in the Sun - 17:05

(Note: Track 5 is spelt as "Desasters in the Sun" in the album packaging, but John Gossard has apparently claimed this was a typo, although other sources (i.e., Wiki/ThatOtherWiki) have claimed that the odd spelling is meant as a reference to the Music/{{Destruction}} song "Total Desaster". Also, "No One..." precedes "Cut Their Grain..." on the vinyl edition, while the cassette has "Cut Their Grain", "No One Can Be Called...", and "...Battlefield" on side A, with "Dead as Dreams" and "Disasters" on side B).

* {{Ambient}}: An influence on some parts, such as the ends of "Dead as Dreams" and "Disasters in the Sun".

* LastNoteNightmare: "Dead as Dreams" ends with about three minutes of this. Also, "Disasters in the Sun" is an arguable Last ''Song'' Nightmare.

* SongStyleShift: Quite frequently due to the lengths of their songs. "This Entire Fucking Battlefield" for instance, goes from a fast, almost triumphant opening section, to a minute of near DroneOfDread, then to furious blasting, then to a trudging, ominous dirge, and then to an almost mournful sounding solo before looping back to the opening riff.
* SpiritualSuccessor: Dispirit, John Gossard's latest band, performs a similar post-rock influenced strain of black metal, though there's more funeral doom influence. Since Gossard's previous band, Asunder, had been a funeral doom outfit, this probably isn't surprising. (The chronology goes Weakling, then The Gault, then Asunder, then Dispirit. The Gault was essentially straight-up DoomMetal.)

* WarIsHell: Seems to be a theme of the band, judging by songs like "Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein" and "This Entire Fucking Battlefield", both of which have a distinctly martial sound to them. We don't know what John Gossard is actually singing about on these songs, but Metal Archives does list their lyrical themes as "War".

(Note: Track 5 is spelt as "Desasters in the Sun" in the album packaging, but John Gossard has apparently claimed this was a typo, although other sources (i.e., Wiki/ThatOtherWiki) have claimed that the odd spelling is meant as a reference to the Music/{{Destruction}} song "Total Desaster". Also, "No One..." precedes "Cut Their Grain..." on the vinyl edition).