We had fallen out of love with pop punk. As a music blog it can become numbing to hear the same Blink 182-lite tracks repackaged, repurposed, and regurgitated over and over again. Then Meet Me @ The Altar popped up in our inbox! It’s fresh, it’s energetic, it’s passionate, and powerful and it’s utterly intoxicating and it gets us dizzy and giddy slurping down the good ol’ pop punk juice of our youth.
Normally we champion music that doesn’t have much of a platform of its own. If a band already has a feature in Kerrang! they probably don’t need our help, but this is a band so exciting we couldn’t help but weigh in with our own two cents and hopefully introduce our audience to a new favourite.
Let’s start with the drums. The backbone of any decent band and all the more important the heavier you get. The drums on this track are a ferocious force of nature. Each beat is perfectly placed and sends shockwaves out that ripple through the sonisphere. At times measured and stripped back and at others completely unchained raining down with a ridiculous raucous rhythm.
The guitar growls throughout but its bark never outstrips its bark and the technicality in the softer moments is mesmerising. There are little flexes and riffs that summon and pay homage to the greats that have gone before but in tone and style it has a voice all its own. The production is phenomenal and in the mix you can hear some truly next level accentuation and play going on.
Lyrically the song speaks of the despair and futility of the world that we live in, it is a anthem for the disenfranchised as all good pop-punk usually is. Yet there is a poetic and positive message that is drawn from out of that bleakness and it shines all the brighter for it.
The vocals are raw, pure, and wholly authentic. It has a tremendous amount of power and passion that seeps into every line and from the full belt, the croon, and the more anthemic shout-along chorus the range in this one song alone speaks of a voice that we’re going to be hearing a lot more of in the days to come. Brighter days are before us indeed.
Sometimes a song comes along that just resonates, with the decade, the climate, and the scene. It has a sound that is distinctly its own and it drowns out a lot of other music on the airwaves that still has one foot stuck in the sound of yesteryear. If this is the future of pop-punk then I need to start living a little cleaner because I don’t wanna miss a minute of it.
The debut EP is out August 13th and they have an upcoming tour supporting All Time Low.
Words by Matt Miles
