There are two ways to become a great band: either do something no one else has done or take something lots of folks have done and do it really, really well. There For Tomorrow aren’t reinventing the wheel on their second LP, The Verge, but they are doing something that seems to be rarer and rarer these days—releasing quality, straightforward hard rock music in the mold of fellow Floridians Anberlin, untainted by either indie’s preciousness or radio rock’s overweening bombast.

Which is not to say The Verge sounds anything less than huge—the arena-scale pretensions of Elvis Baskette’s production suit There For Tomorrow perfectly. Booming drums, spaced-out guitar harmonics and pick slides fill out the sound behind vocalist Maika Maile’s sweetly flat affect in songs like the Verve Pipe-esque “Get It,” and moments like the bridge in standout track “SAAVE” and the intro to “Circle Of Lies” could pass for Circa Survive. Still, Baskette shows a deft hand: he backs off perfectly on “Slip Inside (The Barrel Of Your Gun),” letting the song bubble in its atmosphere without roiling over, treating the expansive sonic pallet as a tool, not a bludgeon.

Maile occasionally lapses into the sort of post-Nirvana, faux-deep gibberish that sounds great as long as you don’t try to parse it; if you can tell me what “I found a road where they color-coded my pledge of allegiance” or “I am a third-world product of inflation” means, you’re way better at this than I am. But what he lacks in specificity he makes up for in delivery, with meaning sunk into his annunciation and with a newfound grit that bolsters tunes like massive opening track “The Verge.” Meanwhile, while the band aren’t exactly treading new ground, they do stretch out a little. Bassist Jay Enriquez and guitarist Christian Climer lock into a throbbing alt-boogie in “Hunt Hunt Hunt”’s verses; Maile breaks out a sweet falsetto on downbeat piano ballad “BLU”.

For longtime fans of There For Tomorrow, The Verge is sure to meet expectations; for folks who thought their previous LP, A Little Faster, was missing a little something, everything on The Verge feels bigger, tougher, more carefully detailed. There’s no major shift in approach here, but ultimately the small touches all add up to a big step forward. In a genre that’s started to languish over the last half-decade, There For Tomorrow are on the verge of being something really special.

★★★.5

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman