POPPY – Negative Spaces

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8.0

• Bands:
  POPPY
• Duration: 00:42:24
• Available from: 11/15/2024
• Label:

• Sumerian Records

In a context such as the current one, in which gender fluidity is now the order of the day, the strong contamination between different musical styles should not be particularly newsworthy; nevertheless, it is not often that you find yourself in front of a multifaceted artist like Poppy, capable of ranging between metalcore, nu metal, hyper pop, shoegaze, punk rock, industrial, alternative and electro; all this, without forgetting the successful collaborations with the hottest bands of the moment (Bad Omens and Knocked Loose, to stay with the most recent).
Having started about ten years ago with the stigmata of a YouTube phenomenon, over time Moriah Rose Pereira has emancipated herself from her character kawaii metal and, after five albums (in six years!) harbingers of experimentation, she is now ready with “Negative Spaces” for the definitive leap in quality, in the footsteps of Bring Me The Horizon, Architects and Spiritbox.
Certainly the tag team with Jordan Fish – no longer on Oli Sykes' payroll – helps to replicate the road to success, but despite some obvious similarities with the Brighton band (“have you had enough?”, “new way out”) anyone who thought they were faced with a new version of BMTH is wrong.
Poppy's blender, on the other hand, takes in everything and returns to heavy mode: there are the shredder rhythms of Slipknot revised with the scream of Spiritbox (“they're all around us”), the increasingly current Chino Moreno in the sleeptokenized version (” surviving on defiance”), the big guitars of the nu metal that was (“the center's falling out”) and even splinters of post-hardcore in the minute and a half of “hey there”.
The lighter section is no less varied, ranging from the dreamy synth-pop of the best The Birthday Massacre (“crystallized”) to the space emo of the final “halo”; in the middle, we discover how Avril Lavigne (“vital”) or the Hole (the title track) would sound updated by the production of Jordan Fish, as well as a tribute to the queen of Pop par excellence – Madonna – in the dance atmosphere of “push go”.
Far be it from us to want to dismiss Mrs. Pereira as a cosplayer with multifaceted talent: she may not (yet) be the Billie Elish of modern metal, but the Poppy phenomenon is here to stay.