The Way it Ends

Seaweed
Weak

The irony of the "SubPop sound" is that the bands on SubPop never really had a unifying sound. The closest thing that would qualify would be the fact that they did not have huge recording budgets that people were used to from major labels at the time. All independent music sounded the same to those people. Therefore, any SubPop sound was the product of the bands using similar recording studios and engineers rather than all of the bands playing the same type of music.

Seaweed were probably the second unluckiest band of the Seattle Revolution after Mudhoney. The difference, though, is that Mudhoney was the poster child for whatever Grunge was, while Seaweed were just a couple of years too early. Weak was released in 1991. Dookie came along three years later. The template for both albums is essentially the same with the Green Day album being more juvenile. So, in addition to being too early, Seaweed was also too mature for most listeners when the pop punk became popular with the kids.

Being passed over never stopped the band. They did sign to Hollywood Records, but that album went nowhere. As recently as 2002, Merge released Actions and Indications, and how the hell did that happen? Merge, really? It was well received, but the time and chance for Seaweed had gone. Weak remains an awesome 30 or so minutes of speedy pop punk with a slight emo edge that the kids all enjoy. Seriously, go pick it up, you shan't be disappointed.