Hi, everyone. Onethony Timetano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Poppy album, Negative Spaces.

Here we have the sixth full-length album from vocalist, songwriter, and internet personality, Moriah Rose Pereira, aka Poppy. An artist who's had one of the most interesting and unlikely evolutions of any popular musician of the past 10 years. As about a decade ago, Poppy first started to make waves in the YouTube space, being this uncanny internet figure who featured in these short, surreal, unsettling videos that were also oddly funny and seemed like a peek into some weird internet purgatory.

Now, Poppy did this content on YouTube for years, and it didn't take long for it to build a insane cult following, which, of course, would be receptive to the Poppy persona going into the music realm.

Now, out of the gate, I think the aesthetics of the Poppy's internet content and music lined up pretty effectively. I mean, it was like this mix of very functional ambient music and quirky electropop. But gradually, Moriah started to experiment more and more with bits of alternative metal from the 2000s, which would lead to some of the most talked about songs on her Am I A Girl record.

From here, I'm not sure if it was a matter of personal preference or just where the cultural winds were blowing. But this is pretty much the sound and stylistic direction Poppy would go in from here on her most major releases. Over time, she slowly morphed into one of the more respectable figures in the modern metal scene, even collaborating recently with the likes of Bad Omens as well as Knocked Loose. She's also received praise and accolades from various rock and metal publications.

I'm really streamlining here for this review because I feel like you can't tell the full story of Moriah's musical progression without also going into the very controversial and turbulent falling out that she had with former content collaborator, Titanic Sinclair. But observing Poppy's trajectory, it's felt like over time, she has slowly began to jettison the quirkier and more subversive bits of the Poppy personality in favor of something that just is more straightforward and serious, less tongue-in-cheek as well.

Take, for example, the record I Disagree, one of the earlier albums in her career, and certainly a record that I think you could categorize as being a metal record. But this record is also packed with numerous nods to pop and electronic music, and there's just a lot of content on it. While it is heavy, it's giving a bit of a nudge and a wink sometimes. Again, I think that aspect, her vibe, and her art has been turned down a bit.

But on subsequent albums, she still has continued to explore different strains of rock music, be it on Flux, where she toyed with bits of industrial metal, lo-fi pop punk, power pop, and noise pop. There was also the amazing EAT EP that she did for NXT, which was packed with just insane metalcore tracks. There was also Zig, which she dropped last year, which I personally found to be her most ungratifying and thankless record so far. The tracklist on this featured a lot of industrially tinged pop with a dark alternative edge. While I think the direction and the theatrics were there, the songwriting and production, not so much.

Now, I'm certainly not alone in thinking this record was particularly weak, and I think in a way, it created a bit of a make or break moment for the Poppy project. Going forward, personally, I felt like there would be a need to either solidify what Poppy has been doing over the last several years or break into a totally different direction entirely.

It seems like with Negative Spaces here, the choice that was made was the former. I mean, with this record, Poppy is even working with producer Jordan Fish, formerly of Bring Me the Horizon fame. A move that I think makes a lot of sense, considering his history in helping to conjure this futuristic blend of pop and metal. Exactly the thing that I could see working well for Poppy esthetically. But believe it or not, Negative Spaces is actually full of sounds that if you're a child of the new metal era, are going to feel like a walk down memory lane.

Again, the vibes of this album and a record like I Disagree are just so night and day because in comparison, this new record right here is totally heavy, it's totally grim, it's totally metal, really taking notes from the likes of Linkin Park and Kittie, Rammstein, I would say, Evanescence, Slipknot, Deftones, Disturbed, especially when she's dropping those screams. Yeah, Poppy and Fish, I think, genuinely have created something here that fans of bands like Spirit Box as well as, I don't know, Silent Planet could be into, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on what it is previously you tended to get out of Poppy's music.

Because I would say for the most part, the absurdity element of Poppy's past works on this record – it's pretty much gone. I think the only couple of seconds that angle is worked on this record is during the "Poppy!" name drop right before the giant riffs on "New Way Out" break in at the start. If you're asking why that may be, I mean, at this point, I think the novelty of Poppy operating in the genre of metal is pretty much gone. I mean, she's been more of a metal artist than she has been anything else for several years now. On top of it, it's also been a long time since she's made the YouTube content that she was once known for a long time ago.

With this record, I feel like she is trying to make a very genuine transition into heavier music, no longer being satisfied with just being an artist who's metal adjacent. I do think Moriah proves herself to have a knack for singing on top of these and screaming on top of these very melodramatic alt metal tracks with ultra-processed explosive guitars and vocals. The evidence of that is proven in very strong singles like "The Cost of Giving Up", "New Way Out", as well as "They're All Around Us".

I mean, all these tracks feature very snappy soaring choruses, crushing guitars on the verses. Think of them as pop bops that you can head bang to. And while I do think these tracks are great, I've definitely warmed up to all of them as I have spun this record more and more. I think heading into this direction so narrowly has led to some redundant cuts on the record where it feels like Moriah and Fish are trying to write the same pop metal crossover hit over and over. It's to the point where I don't really see what tracks like "Vital" as well as "Nothing" bring to the table that these singles don't already, especially given how stale these droning, just very, very groomed guitar tones tend to get by the end of the album. I mean, sometimes the guitars on this thing barely sound like guitars, they're so touched up.

Thankfully, though, there is a respectable amount of variety on this album, too. "Crystalized", for example, is a straight up synth pop number with gated drums and '80s style synth patches. And while I do like what this song brings to the tracklist of this record, I feel like the Poppy project has put out tracks in the past along similar lines that, frankly, songwriting-wise, are just better.

There's also "Push Go", which is a carefree dance number with a galloping beat, which I think could have featured on one of her 2010s projects. It's certainly pop at its core, but it's adorned in enough punchy drums and heavy guitars to get the metal pass. You could call it industrial party rock, and I think overall it works pretty well.

"The Center's Falling Out" is another frantic piece of metalcore that is very Converge-coded, very Dillinger Escape Plan-coded, like something off of that EAT EP that I referenced earlier. And while I do like what the title track brings to the record thematically, it's very much a song about Moriah envisioning herself, thriving or persevering through these very negative experiences, these moments where she's angry, where she is distressed. The narrative on the track is solid for sure, but the guitars and songwriting are very much giving toothless, ultra-slick commercial Smashing Pumpkins.

Finally, "Surviving on Defiance", I think, is the last major highlight on the record. It's pulling from the Deftones playbook in a lot of ways in that it's got that loud, soft dynamic. It's slow and woozy and psychedelic, and the heavier guitar passages are very euphoric. I think the vocals are moving in a Chino Moreno type way as well. But what I think Poppy does with this that makes it feel so different and even interesting is that it feels like we're getting this glimmering dreamy space pop metal blend that's certainly different than your average Deftones song for sure.

Past this point, I will say the record does go into a weak finish with "Halo". Another track in the tracklist where I feel like the very bland and one-note guitar tones throughout the record work against the song writing, and just leave the album feeling more one note than it needs to be.

But with all of that being said, I thought there were way more bops and flops on this record, and it was certainly a very big improvement on Poppy's last album in terms of vocal performances, song structures, overall production quality, even if that was homogeneous across the record, as well as just aesthetic focus. Even if this record isn't as inventive or as wild or as fun and silly as some of Poppy's best works in the past, it's a respectable metal album that brings back a lot of classic sounds from the 2000s in a pretty tasteful way, which is why I'm feeling a light 7 on it.

Anthony Fantano, Poppy, Forever.