The Weak's End — Emery

The Weak's End is the first full album from Emery, a Christian band that Exclaim! described in 2004 as coming from "Seattle by way of North Carolina." Tooth & Nail Records put it out on January 27, 2004. It's ten songs in just under 41 minutes, and it lays down the sound the band would keep building on. We give it a 7/10.

How it came together

Emery made the album with producer and engineer Ed Rose, recording at Blacklodge Studios. J.R. McNeely and Zach Hodges worked on the mix, the band mixed some of it themselves, and Troy Glessner mastered it. Jonathan Dunn handled A&R.

By then Emery was a sextet. Toby Morrell sang lead, Seth Studley played drums, and the band had what Punknews.org called "a triple-guitar attack" along with a full-time keyboard player. Most bands chasing this sound in 2004 didn't carry that many people, and you can hear all of them on the record.

What you're hearing

Walls opens the record, and it's the hardest thing on it. Punktastic said it "yells, kicks and bites its way through three minutes of post-hardcore riffery." When Morrell sings "are you listening?" you sit up. The Ponytail Parades follows the same plan. AllMusic called it "similarly-arranged," and it's built the same way, with clean, drifting verses that suddenly blow open into screams and then pull back again. Those two songs set the template, and the rest of the album keeps coming back to that push and pull. Disguising Mistakes with Goodbyes comes in at 3:20, and it got its own official music video too.

The middle of the record is where Emery stretches out. By All Accounts (Today Was a Disaster) sets anger against melody inside one song, which Punktastic praised as "nice juxtaposing aggression and melody." Fractions runs past five minutes, and The Note from Which a Chord Is Built is a short, strange turn at under two and a half. AllMusic's Johnny Loftus heard those three as "impeccably-paced mini epics," even if he didn't think they added up to much in the end. His pick for the best song was Under Serious Attack, which he said blends post-hardcore with "weird jazzy interludes" and "a veritable treasure chest of reverb vocals."

The closer, The Secret, is the longest song here at almost six minutes. Its breakdown, with Morrell repeating "I still love you, I swear," is the moment two of the toughest reviewers both singled out, even though they didn't like much else. Punktastic said it "has a clever breakdown which again sticks out."

What sets Emery apart is how much is going on at once. Clean singing trades off with screams, the harmonies are layered, and the keys sit underneath it all. Stuart Green at Exclaim! said the band "incorporates a full-time keyboardist to round out the moody atmospherics of their rock," and that was a big part of why he thought Emery stood out. Punknews heard "layered harmonies, and a rising vocal line, with good shifts in tempo."

What it's about

Most of these songs are about heartbreak, guilt and things going wrong between people. Punktastic summed up the singer's point of view as a man whose girl has left him, though "he still loves her really." The words don't preach, and Loftus thought they were too vague, saying the band drifts into "opaque lyricisms that mull over personal pain and a general world-weariness."

The faith is there, though, underneath the hurt. Drummer Seth Studley told Jesus Freak Hideout what the band was going for: "We wanna show people that love is the greatest thing, not in a worldly way, but just a compassionate way. That's our message."

Josh Taylor, who reviewed it for that site, put it this way: "Some songs are soaked in pain, but Emery never fails to let us know that at the end of the day, there's still Someone who cares more deeply about you than you will ever know."

What the critics said

Reviews were mixed, and they mostly split along the same line. Fans of the style liked it. Critics who wanted the band to pick a lane didn't.

Taylor opened his review by saying "2004 starts out with a bang" and that "fans of emo will be in Heaven listening to Emery." He wrote that "Emery plays emo like it was meant to be done," but thought the hardcore side was "laid a little thick and could have easily been reduced." He admitted that "one song sounds like the next one upon first placement in your CD player," but said that with time "each track has it's own distinct feel." He still called it "a great start to a band that will be exciting to watch in the future."

At Exclaim!, Green compared Emery with its labelmates Further Seems Forever and called the band "one of the few deserving of a second look" among the many bands following Thursday. "In a crowded genre, Emery manages to stand out," he wrote.

Loftus noticed an "extreme separation" between the screaming and the singing, and thought the band never made clear what it was trying to say. He did think fans who found Thursday too experimental "might like Emery's more subtle approach."

Punknews.org's Brian Shultz was harsher. He felt the soft parts and the heavy parts "contrast entirely too much to work as a completed whole." He said the three guitars were "about as threatening as a Chihuahua injected with morphine," and he wanted the keyboards turned up in the mix. He thought the band had to choose between the faster, more intense sound of Thursday and the laid-back pop of Hey Mercedes. He finished with a pun on the title: "Emery may very well be at their weak's end already."

Punktastic called Walls "a fantastic opening track" but said the rest was "mood swing central." Its verdict was that "it's all been seen and done before, but thankfully for the most part Emery do it better." The reviewer added that "you could do a lot worse than Emery" if you wanted to try a new band from that emo boom.

Watch

Start with Walls, the official video for the opening track and the hardest song on the album. Then watch the official video for Disguising Mistakes with Goodbyes. Last is an acoustic performance of The Ponytail Parades from Tooth & Nail's channel.

The verdict

The critics who said the band hadn't settled on one sound weren't wrong. Some songs blur together on a first listen, and the screaming does sometimes feel bolted on rather than built in. But the push and pull is the point. Walls, The Ponytail Parades and The Secret still hit hard, the harmonies are real, and the keyboards give the whole thing a shimmer most of its peers didn't have. It's a first album that sounds like a band finding itself, and that's worth hearing.

7/10

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