The unfiltered and unstoppable new era of Meet Me @ The Altar

“Every single time Edith [Victoria] sent the finished demo with lyrics on it, I’d be like, ‘Damn you need therapy,’” Ada Juarez says of her Meet Me @ The Altar copilot. “I am in therapy, may I add…”

Edith wasn’t worried about her bandmate’s reactions to her most unfiltered lyricism yet. “Ada and I are so tuned in with each other that I almost always know that we’re feeling the same things,” she says, dialling in from a bedroom with walls completely, impressively, covered in posters. “I felt like I didn’t have to worry if she felt this way as well, because I knew that she did, and that really gave me all even more freedom to just write whatever the fuck I wanted.”

Edith still hasn’t gone to therapy, even though she knows she should (and Ada tells her as much) – rather, their new EP Worried Sick served a similar sort of purpose. The band’s been quieter in the last 18 months, their gig calendar blank for almost a year by the time they returned to performing at Coheed And Cambria’s SS Neverender cruise last month. It’s a period that has been tumultuous to say the least, their foundations rocked by personal upheaval, crumbling relationships and significant shifts in band operations. Guitarist Téa Campbell announced her departure in April to “pursue more passions aligned with who I am today”, while the band’s relationship with label Fueled By Ramen ended, leaving them independent for a period before they signed with LAB Records.

It marked the first time Edith found herself struggling with her mental health. “I hadn’t really experienced that level of depression before,” she admits. Fortunately, Meet Me @ The Altar’s new label handed them more creative control than before, which in turn gave Edith the freedom she needed to work through everything she was feeling. And when she got to writing, she let herself explode. “I didn’t care if what I was saying was too harsh or too honest or too sad,” she says. “I was feeling so many intense emotions and they needed to come out. I really had no choice. I don’t even know what I would have done if I didn’t allow them to be heard, I feel like it just wouldn’t have been good for me at all.”

Until now, Edith’s lyricism had generally had a sweeter edge. She’s frank, she’s real, but even at her most cutting there was a streak of sass or positivity underneath. There are points on the new EP when any sense of sugar is swept aside, given she has a sourer taste in her mouth. In fact, when she sings in Dead To Me, ‘Life would be better if you died,’ it lands as a stinging shock.

“The music industry can make you a really hateful person, I was angry, and so that’s how that lyric came about,” Edith explains. “I think it’s important to write about emotions that might have a bit of shame behind them. Hatred and anger are often viewed as shameful emotions, even though everyone in the world feels it. It shouldn’t be something that’s always covered in shame.”

Now around the halfway point of their 20s, Edith and Ada have shaken off the wide-eyed naivety they had when they first entered the music industry. Though they’re as bubbly and witty as ever, they’re hardened by experience a little more, having seen the intensity and difficulty of a notoriously merciless world. “The industry is very cut-throat. It also can make you second-guess yourself and ask yourself if you’re good enough and if you have to change yourself so people will like you,” observes the singer. “You have to have a very strong sense of self and have really good confidence if you want to try and follow your dreams sometimes.”

They also know what it’s like to have too many hands on the steering wheel. “We were able to make a lot of the shots [previously], but there were a lot of talk about what we should do and the sound we should have, and that very much influenced us with our last album [2023’s Past // Present // Future],” says Ada. “With this EP, all of that talk wasn’t there. We were able to just do exactly what we wanted to do, and it was way easier that way, and less weight on our shoulders. We were just doing what we wanted to do.”

Although the pair don’t regret the softer, poppier ‘Disneycore’ energy of their debut album, pivoting back to the heavier, crunchier easycore sound of their previous music was a no-brainer. “I think the heavy music is what put us on the map in the first place,” explains Edith. “Also, whenever there’s something that’s a part of you, it’s really hard to suppress it. At the end of the day, I feel like you always go back to what’s natural, and it’s extremely natural for us. But then also there’s the live aspect of it – we love mosh-pits and crowdsurfing!”

Needing to reconfigure their writing process after Téa left, MM@TA reunited with Mike Green for the first time since 2021 EP Model Citizen. Crucially, Mike didn’t just understand their desire to go heavier but embraced them. “He’s not afraid of breakdowns. He’s not afraid of being tough and rough around the edges. So that that makes him a perfect writing partner,” Edith continues.

“He encourages it!” adds Ada. “There were so many times we would get into the sessions and he would be like, ‘Alright, you guys can just blow it out the park and do the heaviest thing in the entire world – and the lowest guitar tuning possible.’”

“Once you lose people around you that really understand your vision, when they come back, you just will not take it for granted,” stresses Edith.

To reference one of Meet Me @ The Altar’s earlier songs, brighter days are now before them. Edith is in the best place mentally that she’s been in for two years, even if she still has some healing to do. They have more creative control. They’ve done the first writing session for album two. For all of the strife, they’re wiser for it. Edith also says she’s better learned to trust her gut – “It’s never steered me wrong, ever” – while the main takeaway for Ada is that the only person in music who will fully have her back is her bandmate.

“No matter what happens, it’s really just us, and it’s what we want, and the music we want to put out, the vision we want to create, the story we want to tell,” she says. “It’s whatever we want, and it really doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks or wants to influence.”

After this, they’re closer than ever. “Being in a band, you have a trauma bond just from touring, no matter what,” Ada continues, addressing Edith, “And if I’m ever in prison, I’m calling you – and you better answer the phone! And I’ll answer the phone for you. I’ll do anything for this girl, I really would.”

Worried Sick is out now

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