Near Miss--Testing The Ends of What They’ll Put Up With

Austin punk-rockers Near Miss are back from their 2002 debut, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Testing The Ends of What They’ll Put Up With is a fierce follow-up with incredible drum work by Max Béchard, formerly of Bigwig fame. Fans of current punk-revivalist work like NOFX, Smile Empty Soul, and even (to an extent) Fall Out Boy will eat this album up. "Now Rectify" is a good place to start, a power-heavy track that intertwines its vocals with the instrumentals for a full onslaught of rowdy aggression. Near Miss carries a lot of power in these explosive songs, and falter when they pull back such as in "Serious Mess," where vocalist Jeremy Hernandez begins to sound more like an off-pitch middle school choir boy. Even the hybrid loud/soft track "Take It Back" exposes these faults to a point, but again mixes the instrumentals well. The listener is never hit with too much of one side of the spectrum, and if the vocals climax into scathing screaming, the instrumentals follow, a sign of maturation from veteran rockers. The drums are simply the best part of Near Miss though, just flip on "Feel When You Find" for an out-of-control beat-fest that just won’t end, and you’ll see just what an incredible asset Béchard is. With a good blend of instrumentals and vocals, Testing the Ends of What They’ll Put Up With is a well-mixed punk-revivalist album that outshines their more popular contemporaries at times. An on-target sophomore effort from Near Miss.

(Published at MusicEmissions.com)