Review by Greg Maki
Photos by Alana Lopez
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If 2024 was the year of Poppy, what are we going to call 2025? After last year’s breakthrough collaborations with Bad Omens (“V.A.N.“) and Knocked Loose (“Suffocate,” scoring her second Grammy nomination), a headline-making performance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” (with Knocked Loose) and her superb sixth full-length, “Negative Spaces” (Live Metal’s album of the year), this year already has seen the enigmatic singer/performance artist return to “Kimmel” (performing “the cost of giving up”), team up with BABYMETAL (“from me to u“) and launch a North American headline tour playing to capacity crowds from coast to coast.
Poppy’s “They’re All Around Us” tour recently brought her to the Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, where eager fans lined up around the block hours before showtime. It quickly became evident that Poppy has attracted a crowd from all walks of life, split roughly even between male and female, with a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds, from long-haired dudes in Cannibal Corpse T-shirts to young women in outfits clearly inspired by Poppy herself. What a gift to bring together so many so different.
House of Protection, a duo featuring former Fever 333 members Stephen Harrison (guitar/vocals) and Aric Improta (drums/vocals), kicked off the night with a high-energy set that almost instantly won over the packed house. No doubt Harrison was familiar to many as he co-wrote much of “Negative Spaces” with Poppy (and producer Jordan Fish) and played guitar on the album, but his and Improta’s engaging stage presence was the real clincher. Improta was far more lively and interactive than the typical hidden-in-the-back drummer, performing a literal backflip at one point, while Harrison took his message directly to the people, performing two songs amid the crowd, one in the middle of a circle pit. Fever 333 is a good starting point for House of Protection’s sound, which may skew a bit heavier. With continued exposure on outlets such as Octane and as word of its live show spreads, big things could be in store for this band in the very near future.
A mere 15 minutes after House of Protection wrapped its set, a timer projected on the back curtain of the stage started counting down from five minutes, the anticipation in the room building with each second. After the clock hit triple zeros, three masked musicians—drummer, bassist and guitarist—quickly emerged and assumed their places on their respective platforms toward the rear of the stage, soon followed by Poppy herself, climbing her own platform at stage left and immediately launching into “have you had enough?,” the robust, industrialized opener of “Negative Spaces.” A pair of tracks from the 2020 album “I Disagree” followed—the Grammy-nominated “BLOODMONEY” and “Sit/Stay”—setting the tone for a set dominated by those two records (eight songs from “Negative Spaces,” six from “I Disagree”). With the new record garnering Poppy by far the most mainstream attention she’s ever received, sticking to heavier material was a wise choice, and the “Negative Spaces” selections were the clear fan favorites.
Poppy—wearing a garment reminiscent of the “Seinfeld” puffy shirt but making it work—and her band stayed mostly stationary on their platforms until the seething banger “the center’s falling out,” which featured a Stephen Harrison guest spot on guitar. Even as she prowled the stage getting closer to the fans and playing to different parts of the crowd, there remained a small sense of detachment between her and the people—a natural byproduct of the somewhat confounding persona she’s crafted over the years, a character she seemingly never has broken from in public view. Still, the rage behind the bloodcurdling screams was palpable, the smiles seemed genuine, and the enthusiasm of the crowd was unrelenting.
Highlights of the set included a spirited rendition of the Bad Omens collab “V.A.N.,” the ‘90s alt rock-leaning “vital,” “Scary Mask” from 2019’s “Choke” EP and the two-song encore of the tour’s namesake, “they’re all around us,” and Poppy’s highest-charting solo single to date, “new way out.” Perhaps “highlights” is the wrong, though, as it implies that there were low points of the set and there most certainly were not.
As incendiary as the performance was, it only scratched the surface of Poppy as an artist. As anyone who has followed her knows, her penchant for flitting between genres from album to album, song to song has been her calling card as much as anything else. While it may be a large part of what turns off narrow-minded metalheads, it has Poppy on the verge of superstardom.
POPPY SET LIST: “have you had enough?,” “BLOODMONEY,” “Sit/Stay,” “V.A.N.,” “the cost of giving up,” “Anything Like Me,” “crystallized,” “vital,” “the center’s falling out” (with Stephen Harrison of House of Protection), “Scary Mask,” “I Disagree,” “Bite Your Teeth,” “Concrete,” “surviving on defiance,” (encore) “they’re all around us,” “new way out”
LINKS:
www.impoppy.com
www.houseofprotectionmusic.com
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