With the success found with a bigger label, budget, and fanbase, Greeley Estates started gaining more popularity in the music scene. Greeley Estates spent most of their time only touring to build their fanbase. The band started touring festivals such as
Taste of Chaos and
Warped Tour finding moderate success in the post hardcore scene with songs like "Y'all With the Vampire Squad" and "The End of All We Know".
Much with the band's
Caveat Emptor EP,
Far From the Lies sounds akin to the sound the band has been building on for the past two years albeit with better production quality. This album actually marks the first of longtime producer Cory Spotts handling the music and it's a good highlight of the album. Cory brings out the sleek guitar sounds and is able to bring out the best in the singer's voice which has noticeably improved since the prior album.
But while the sound quality has improved, the songwriting has barely budged. It's in no way offensive, if not underwhelming. There's twelve tracks on this album and two are re-records in "Life Is A Garden" off
Caveat Emptor and "Through Waiting" off
Outside of This. There's far too many preachy ballads in songs like "This Moment" or "Believe the Lies". The only true interesting moments are in The opener "The End of All We Know" with its hard tuned guitars riffing along with bashing drums as the screams of "Is this the end of all we know?" shriek in the background. There's a nice bridge in "Nothing Good Happens After Dark" with booming bass and a back and forth from the harsh and sung vocals. Finally, the track "Remember" is fairly catchy as clean guitars play alongside Ryan's clean singing. This is a track that actually feels better for its lack of harsh vocals.
But for those few good parts, the album feels too much of a slog with too many uninteresting ideas to carry a full album. songs like aforementioned "Believe the Lies" and "Secret" have tepid lyrics on top of repetitive chords making them a struggle to get through. The only sole saving grace might be the melody of the clean vocals, but they're not strong enough to carry the songs. With hindsight we can see the heights the band would later reach but also troubles alongside them. This was the final album for both founding rhythm guitarist and bassist which would also start a curse of rotating members throughout the bands career. With these struggles the main driving force in Ryan's support has kept this band around over ten years past this forgettable album.
