“All the eyes need new ideas,” Poppy states at the opening of her latest album, Negative Spaces. This, alongside the closing lines of that same track (“There’s a new high, but you just sink so low / Have you fucking had enough?”) pushes us into the conflict that runs through these 15 masterful songs: of being stuck in the eponymous negative spaces and fighting to find one’s way out of the hurt and rage through nurturing a determined hope.

The rage certainly comes through with the heaviness of the first tracks, particularly in the introspective and motivational “the cost of giving up” and in the opening brutality of “they’re all around us,” ruminations on the pain that’s been done and the lasting impact of those scars. Sonically, Poppy showcases not just her heaviness but her ability to merge that heaviness with pop-influenced choruses, a staple of her more recent work.

Yet she doesn’t spend the album dwelling in that pain. The middle tracks present a fun, hopeful vibe, particularly in the upbeat and infinitely catchy “crystallized,” which in its dance-influenced runtime concerns itself with searching for love despite past heartbreak. This is most apparent in the chorus: “All my tears have crystallized / And I’ll never be alone again.”

The most emotionally raw track, “vital” depicts dealing with the cycle of love and hate while asserting that same refusal to give into despair with, “I want to believe there’s a motivation / In negative spaces.” Meanwhile, “push go” provides another dancey track, while the nu-metal influence of “nothing” recalls the vocals of Amy Lee. The jazzy interlude “hey there” further contemplates, “Is there motivation in negative spaces?” while the self-empowering title track “negative spaces” calls back to 2021’s Flux with wonderful lines such as, “I like what I represent,” asserting that, despite the hardships of living in the modern world, staying true to oneself is how one survives. The closing track, “halo,” underscores this sentiment, reinforcing how important it is to endure the pain while pushing forward to the light that waits in the future.

Negative Spaces is ultimately a work of bravery: of a willful determination to carry forward, to endure today because tomorrow can be better. It showcases Poppy’s incredible range, both in genre and emotion, standing as her strongest album to date and as a new multi-genre golden standard of what metal is today.

Photo Credit: Spotify