The writing for the songs took place in East Village, Manhattan, since all of the members of the band lived in New York, with the exception of Henry Rollins, who was based in Los Angeles.

"[6] In May 1994, Spin described the album as a mix of rap, punk, funk, metal and jazz, also calling it a "far cry" from Henry Rollins' previous band Black Flag.

[9] In his 1994 book The Virgin Rock Yearbook 1994-1995, British author Tony Horkins wrote that with Weight, Rollins Band were delving into the funk metal genre, which was popular in the early 1990s.

[11] Gibbs was recommended to Rollins by Vernon Reid, who was a member of the all-black funk metal band Living Colour.

One of the reasons was, when I was growing up, that was the Do the Right Thing era in Brooklyn and essentially any kid who wore a Black Sabbath t-shirt was going to call me the N-word, and I was going to have to fight him.

"[2] According to Gibbs, Rollins was being heavily influenced by the stoner rock band Sleep around the making of Weight, which led to him becoming a fan of the style as well.

[2] "Liar" has been described as being written from the perspective of a manipulative male character, although Rollins refuted this in a May 1994 interview with MTV's Headbangers Ball, saying, "the person in the song isn't necessarily a guy.

[13] The video for "Liar" was directed by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn in a desert location and featured Rollins dressed as a devil, a nun, Superman and a police officer, with the latter three being meant to represent "icons of truth".

It featured Weight-era live recordings and B-sides, as well as songs from an unreleased 1993 album the band had made with free jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle.

[27][28] Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave it a four out of five star rating, saying "on Weight, the Rollins Band is able to mix the musicians' love for jazz with a blindingly direct hard rock assault, making a twisted form of metal-jazz.

"[9] He also described Weight as lyrically adding some of the more down to earth elements from Rollins' spoken word career, which were not present on the earlier albums, which Erlewine considered to be solely about "relentless self-examination".

[9] Richard Cromelin of The Los Angeles Times awarded it a three out of four rating, saying in April 1994 that "[Rollins] is like a martial-arts hero of the psychic terrain, and his war with hypocrisy and repression is played out on a scale that’s both intimate and larger than life — his feelings are too intense and colossal to be conveyed in conventional terms, so his bellow is super human, and his band plays its deliberate sludge-metal riffs with crushing power.

"[23] Deborah Frost of Entertainment Weekly gave it an A− rating in April 1994, saying "the guitarist’s heavy-metal cliches never quite rise to frontman Rollins’ or new bassist Melvin Gibbs’ Richter-scale rumbling.

"[22] Orla Swift of the Record Journal listed it as one of the best albums of the year in December 1994, observing that "the addition of new bassist Melvin Gibbs gives the band a more fluid sound and allows guitarist Chris Haskett's divebombing guitar to be heard.

He may be 'high on your poison,' but what makes this album more interesting than most Rollins releases is not its Dionysian intensity — that's standard — but its unaccustomed musical variety.

"[35] Spin wrote in 2000 that this album and Come In and Burn saw Rollins "play self-help drill sergeant against the atonal guitar riffs and Frankenstein grooves blueprinted [on] 1988's Life Time.