Band : Greeley Estates

Album title : Go West Young Man, Let The Evil Go East

Label : Science Records - Ferret Music - Suburban

Distributor : Ferret Music

Release date : 06/05/2008

Release : CD

Wow man, what an utterly devastating and melodically blasting Post-Hardcore act this Phoenix (Arizona) based band is! And it would seem a lót of people agree with that somewhat emotional statement of mine!

Founded in 2002, the band's line-up went through several changes, which however did not hamper their rise to stardom. The original line-up saw its drummer exit when the band left the rehearsal room to do their first local shows late 2003. In his stead came Brain "Bchamp" Champ, still with the band today.During 2004, the five-piece privately recorded and released their debut full-length Outside Of This. Tracks put on purevolume.com were subsequently hit over a million times, earning GE an honorary place in the Top 10 Unsigned Artists catogory on the website. Sales of the album through Smartpunk then earned the band the top 10 accolade "Sales Of All Time". Early 2005 saw the release of GE's 8-track EP Caveat Emptor. Meanwhile, and not surprisingly, people were beginning to notice the band, with as first result that they were doin' their first US tour in November 2004, prior to which original bassist Jared left to be replaced by Josh Applebach. In May of 2005, the band even self-released their DVD The Death Of Greeley Estates.

Not surprisingly, GE had gotten noticed by now, with as result that they got invited to join the notorious Vans Warped Tour, later also appearing on the compilation CD of that year's tour. 2005 also saw the band's signing to the Record Collection imprint, who released the band's official debut full-length Far From The Lies (recorded by top-producer Lou Giordano)in 2006, first having helped 'em on the MySpace Fall Tour 2005. The release was followed by more successful US tours, including complete runs of the 2006 Vans Warped and Taste Of Chaos festival tours.

2007 would become a somewhat tumultuous tear for GE's line-up, starting with Applebach leaving the band for a teaching career in Phoenix. His live replacement Bradley Murray (previously with Versus The Minor) would leave for "personal reasons" (no further explanations available) after the band's Mexican tour with Silverstein during Summer. Guitarist Dallas Smith announced his departure in early June (his last show being later that same month) in favour of raising a family with his wife, expecting twin girls. Regretfully, the couple would later befall a miscarriage, with the inevitable loss of their children as result. September saw the band, with new guitarist Alejondro "Alex" Torres (formerly of Eyes Set To Kill) and interim bassist Joshua Ferguson (ex-Glory Nights; left for purely personal reasons, namely to complete his apprenticeship as a hair stylist in Canada), the latter since the completion of the recordings replaced by Tyler "Telle" Smith (was guitarist/ keyboardist/ singer with March And Collapse, guitarist/ vocalist for Emarosa, and In Fear And Faith's frontman – the latter two bands having released stuff through Rise Records. Smith still maintains a solo project on MySpace entitled Beyond Breath, and played his first show with GE on February 9 th, 2008).

So, what's so special about these guys, you might ask? Well, besides the fact that musically, the band produces an extremely melodic multi-layered Metal-infused Hardcore with a Progressive feel which comes from using poly-rhythms as well as multiple pace changes and stop-start tactics in the guitar works delivered by Torres and original GE member Brandon "Brando" Hackeson on top of a truly thunderously pummeling (thanks to the use of double bass drums) rhythm section. And to top everything off, there's also a multi-styled vocal delivery. With that somewhat whiny quality in his voice, you could "accuse" lead singer Ryan Zimmerman of being influenced firstly and foremost by Emo. But you could also talk about Screamo, and very frequently he also goes to such aggressive ways as to literally barf out his sentences. On the other side, there's also some (rare) passages where his style is rather calm and poised...never completely without that moaning quality, though. Occasionally Ryan gets additional vocal backings, like the nice male "crowd" bit during album opener"Blue Morning", or the wonderful female chorus at 2/3 of the ensuing "Go West Young Man"...tracks which you can listen to at myspace.com/greeleyestates. One thing that becomes evident as you will listen to the songs posted at MySpace (off the album there's also "If We're Going Out, Let's Go Out In Style", and "You're Just Somebody I Used To Know", and then there's one song each off Outside Of This and Caveat Emptor), is that the boys also made use of synths (or at least guitar synth) on quite a few of the 13 tracks (totally enjoyable listening time just over 53 minutes), allowing for yet another bit of intrigue in the whole of their musical soundscape.

Frankly, words fall short to give a decent description of the exitement I felt every time I put on the CD (and due to a week's course in order to enhance my performance at the job I was able to get quite a bit of extra listening sessions indeed). Suffice it to say that at this very moment, which is after at least 10 sessions, I'm still not getting bored with the offering. Nay...in fact I'm still discovering details I feel not having noticed before. Complexity? Sure, there's some of that, but most of all GE's music is typified by the high degree of (emotionally charged) gripping melody. Listen to the posted songs and dare say you don't feel the incredible appeal!!!

98/100

Tony.