Since the arrival of their debut album ‘Past // Present // Future’ in 2023, a lot has changed for Meet Me @ The Altar. Following the departure of guitarist Téa Campbell and their separation from a major record label, vocalist Edith Victoria and drummer Ada Juarez have had a hell of a lot of hard decisions to make regarding their future.
Handling the logistics of band life whilst simultaneously trying to come to terms with their own personal emotions and frustrations, new EP ‘Worried Sick’ marks their first chapter as an independent band and as a duo. Six songs fuelled by anger, confusion and catharsis, they’re stepping into an era that shuts out every outside voice and doubles down on the core of who they truly are.
Dialling back into their heavier influences and embracing the easycore sound that drove their early releases, ‘Worried Sick’ finds Meet Me @ The Altar relighting the spark and sharpening every edge. Co-written and produced by Mike Green (Paramore, 5 Seconds of Summer, Pierce The Veil), it’s packed with raw energy, pure heart and lyrics that proudly own every emotion we’re often too scared to admit we feel.
Re-building after a period of heartbreak, Rock Sound caught up with Edith and Ada to talk about new beginnings, returning to their heavy roots and why ‘Worried Sick’ feels like one of the most important projects they’ve ever worked on.
Rock Sound: We’re catching you at the start of a huge new chapter. A lot has changed – you’re independent now, you’re a two-piece, and naturally your sound has shifted. When you first got the news that Téa was leaving, was continuing as a duo the only logical next step for you?
Ada Juarez: I would say so, yeah. It was funny because we were a two-piece before I joined, and so in a way, history is repeating itself – which it always does. It was definitely the perfect next step for us. I think strengthening our bond was very important, and we do eventually want to be a three-piece again, but it’s a big decision. You want to make the right choice and find the right girl. You have to vibe with the people in your band because you’re living with them on tour, and you have to write together. You have to have the same influences, too. There are a bunch of decisions, and it’s going to take a couple of years for us to find the perfect person, but being a two-piece for now is definitely right for us.
RS: When people hear the new EP, they’ll definitely notice the shift that’s happened in your sound. Once it was just the two of you in a room, what did that next chapter start to look like? Did you instantly start to lean further towards that heavier, easycore sound?
Ada: Instant is the perfect word for it. I feel like it was a long time coming, weirdly enough. We were always going to come back to this sound, because this is where our hearts are. We love this genre and being a heavy band, and we definitely missed it when we strayed from it. We don’t regret moving away from it when we did, but playing heavier music is more in line with what we love. Just seeing everything change in front of us, we were like, ‘Okay, we already know what we have to do. Let’s just do it.’ I don’t even think a conversation needed to be had. It was just like, ‘Yeah, this is what we’re doing, and we’re going to do it.’ And we did.
Edith Victoria: Especially coming off of a major label, where I wouldn’t say we completely lost creative control, but there were aspects of that. Certain things that certain team members would say that made us think we had to sound a certain way to get to where we wanted to be as a successful band. As people who love all types of music, that’s hard, because whilst we like stuff that’s not as heavy, we also love heavy things. If you have a huge music exec telling you that maybe you should just do the lighter stuff, it’s like, ‘Okay, well we do like that, so I guess we can try it.’ We don’t completely regret it, but we definitely missed our roots, and I think a lot of fans missed our roots as well. When things started changing so much, it was a free-for-all. Whatever we wanted to do, we could do it now. Both us and our fans want the exact same thing right now, and that’s for us to go the heavier route again.
RS: It feels like home for you, and it also taps back into that very simple idea of being fans of music. As things get bigger and more voices get thrown into the mix, it can be easy to forget just why you started doing this. All the milestones and figures can disconnect you from the fact that you’re only here because you love music and you love this scene. Has returning to this style helped you reconnect with that inner fan again?
Edith: Yeah, it’s actually been very therapeutic to reconnect with it. It’s so easy to lose sight and start doing things for other people, especially when you have a super big team or if you’re under a major label. People expect things from you and they want the best from you, but it can feel like a lot of pressure.
I personally absolutely lost sight of the sound I really love and why I was doing things. You’re working so much, you’re touring so much, and it can start to feel like a job, especially when people are expecting things from you. It feels very healing to just remember why we started it. The past couple of years have been really hard for us, but I don’t think I’d change it, because now I’m never going to take anything for granted.
RS: Let’s talk about how all of that filters into the themes of the EP. There’s a lot of anger, pain and catharsis in there. What was going through your heads as you were putting these songs together after everything you’ve been through over the last few years?
Edith: I was trying to respect my emotions and give them time to breathe. I just let everything out on the pages. I don’t even care what anyone has to say about what I’m feeling, because I’m feeling it. I’m feeling it a lot, so I decided I was going to do myself a service and write about it freely, no matter what I thought people would think it’s about. If it’s harsh, I don’t care, because I felt that way. This is the first time that I really had full creative control over what I was saying, which was great but also kind of scary. I know fans always wonder about the meaning behind songs, but I have to let them wonder whatever they want to wonder. I know what it’s about, and I just really needed that outlet. I was really depressed, and I’m still working on it, but it helped me a lot. I don’t regret saying anything that I said.
Ada: It was a therapy session, for sure. It needed to happen because Edith and I were both kind of feeling the same things. It’s a lot of anger, grief and confusion, but that’s where all the good music comes from. We had to go through what we went through to write such an incredible EP, in my opinion.
Edith: We were very down, but like Ada said, we were also grieving. We were regretful, as well as angry and sad. I was feeling all of the emotions at the same time, and it’s a little bit conflicting. I’m angry about the situation, but also a part of me misses how things used to be. It’s a lot, and I needed to write about all of it because there was so much going on in my head.
RS: That catharsis of putting your thoughts down on paper is one of the purest joys of any art-making. What’s very special about having an audience for that art though is that no matter how specific the situations you’re writing about are, each line can take on a totally different life for anyone else…
Edith: Definitely. When I was writing it in real time, I was just caught up on shit. I’d write a song, have it on my phone for a couple of days or weeks, then I’d come back to it and think, ‘Surely a lot of people feel this way.’
People don’t want to admit that they hate someone. People don’t want to admit that there are people in the world that they don’t like at all, but that’s okay. At the same time though, it’s also okay to feel regretful. It’s okay to feel like you want someone to accept you. It’s okay to feel all of these vulnerable emotions. When the EP was done and it was in the demo stage, I realised how relatable the songs were. Everyone goes through these emotions, but they don’t necessarily want to admit that they feel them. People might think they’re too harsh, but they’re real.
Ada: You can feel that in ‘Dead To Me’. As we were finishing that song up and all of the people on our team were listening to it, there were several people saying, ‘Yeah, I really relate to this song right now.’ We were so glad that they could relate to it, because we certainly could.
Edith: The whole EP is kind of like a weird, deranged love letter to the music industry. People tell you horror stories about labels and managers, and I think as artists we retain that information, but we don’t necessarily fully understand it until it happens to you. Then you go through these weird emotions of, ‘Am I good enough?’ Then after a while it’s like, ‘No, actually, fuck them, I am good enough.’ You keep going back and forth on it. The industry is like a bad ex that you keep going back to because you love it. Writing these songs really helped me get through our first industry heartbreak.
RS: Within the industry there are certainly a few good eggs though, and Mike Green is one of those. He’s worked with everyone from 5 Seconds of Summer to Pierce The Veil and is so passionate about every project he works on. Why was he the right person to trust with this?
Edith: We actually worked with Mike for the first time in 2022, when we were in LA writing our debut record. You can tell when someone doesn’t really care about the industry, when they just love music and love what they do… He is 1,000 per cent one of those people.
At the time, we were coming off ‘Model Citizen’ and still very influenced by easycore. He really understood the heavy side of us, and he wasn’t afraid of embracing it. We didn’t end up using those songs because the label we were on at the time said they were too heavy, but I never forgot the sessions. He just understood the attitude and spunk that our instrumentals had. He loved it, and he knew how to bring it out of us.
So then when everything happened, I needed a new writing partner. I’ve never written alone previously as I’ve always written everything with Téa, so I was thinking about people that we’ve worked with in the past, and I remembered Mike. I thought he would be absolutely perfect. He listened to what we had to say, which is so hard to find with a writing partner, especially with songwriters in LA. He ended up being way more perfect than I first thought, because our writing process is exactly the same as it was before we were a two-piece. We hop on Zoom and he writes instrumentals, asks us what we want it to sound like, and then I take over to write melody and lyrics. It’s a perfect fit.
RS: When it came time to pick the first song to come back with, the one that had to introduce this whole new era, how did you make that decision?
Edith: I just knew I wanted it to sound really heavy. There was a lot of back and forth on which songs we wanted as the singles, but I definitely knew what I wanted to be the first song. It needed to be the heaviest song, and it needed to feel like someone getting slapped in the face. I feel like we chose the perfect song.
I didn’t want to come out with ‘Dead To Me’ as the first song because that’s a little too intense, but ‘Straight Up (Needy)’ is really vulnerable too. It’s the perfect amount of heavy, and it does feel like you’re getting slapped in the face. It comes in hard and stays hard the whole time. We wanted people to say, ‘Oh, they’re definitely back, and they’re not joking about wanting to be heavy again.’
RS: ‘Straight Up (Needy)’ is one of those moments where it just clicks that this is what this band is supposed to do. Another one of those moments is ‘Karma’, which feels like this ultimate anthem of revenge. There’s no sugarcoating it…
Edith: Honestly, I was unsure about that one right after the session. I wasn’t sure why, but I just wasn’t 100 per cent with it. It’s another one of those songs that’s about something people don’t necessarily want to admit. When someone does you wrong, or a situation does you wrong, I think we all feel like we want revenge. It’s something else that people struggle admitting. I also have always wanted to write a song called ‘Karma’, and it was the perfect time.
RS: One thing you’ve always done as a band is talk about things that other people might shy away from – whether that’s mental health, relationships or identity. Like we’ve said, with this EP you’re diving into anger and revenge in a way a lot of artists might water down. Is facing up to those uncomfortable realities something that drives you as musicians?
Edith: Absolutely, and I think that music listeners need to feel validated in their own feelings. A lot of the emotions on the EP can bring shame. It’s like, ‘Am I a bad person for thinking this?’ You’re not though. Other people feel this all the time, and it’s okay.
That was definitely something that we wanted to bring back, because most of our earlier music touches on topics that other people don’t want to talk about. I don’t think we necessarily lost that in our debut album, but there was definitely less of that. It was time to bring it all back.
RS: Let’s talk about the live show, because every song on this EP has the potential to create some of the biggest moments in your set. Leaning back into that heavier territory, were you conscious of including the mosh calls and those perfect moments to circle pit?
Edith: Coming off our debut album, that’s one thing I missed – having mosh calls and just imagining the crowd surfers. It was such a big thing I was thinking about when we were writing. I don’t know if I’m biased because I love heavy music so much, but usually it’s easier to not think about those things when you’re writing heavy music. Everyone knows what to do when there’s a mosh call, or when there’s a breakdown, or when there’s a moment that people need to clap together. It all came together very seamlessly, and I was a lot less worried about it this time than I was last time we were writing. Heavy music just has a lot of energy, and people feel that. It’s going to be natural to the crowd.
RS: We’re at the very start of this new era. You’re independent, you’re a two-piece, you’ve taken things right back to the beginning sound-wise. On a human level, how positive are you feeling right now?
Edith: I think the shock of everything is still settling, and I’m still dealing with a lot of depression. I’m learning to not compare this chapter to the last one, since the last one was so amazing. Things were pretty much the same for us for five years, and all of a sudden to not have those things anymore… I think I’m still dealing with it.
We just got off the Coheed And Cambria cruise though, and that was everything that we needed to feel confident and excited again. I know that this is going to be such a great chapter for us. We’re also going to be a four-piece again during our live show, and we love to hire girls to play with us. We had that on the cruise, and getting the response to the live show as a full band again was incredible. Everyone was so supportive and nice. At this moment, it’s very important for us to have all the control that we have right now, because we’re going to hit the ground running. We’ve learned a lot of lessons, and we’re older now… We’re ready.
Ada: Eager is definitely the best word to describe how we feel right now. We’ve spent the last year doing nothing but writing and figuring everything out, and now we want to tour again. We want to get back on the road and do all the things that we did constantly for the past five years. We want to experience it all again. We’ve been sitting here for a year waiting around now. Once the EP was done, we just wanted to get straight back out there.
So yeah, we’re still depressed, but we’re so eager. I feel like being depressed never really goes away when hardships happen to us. There are always going to be memories, but hey – the only thing that can happen is that things can get better, and things are already getting better.
‘Worried Sick’ is out on December 05.
