Review Summary: The corporatization of metal is complate.
Poppy's current popularity for "Negative Spaces" is pretty ironic. This album embodies everything that the usual critics can't stand. It's ridiculously overproduced, the vocals are so altered that you can hardly tell it's a real woman singing. And honestly, who is Poppy? What's her vibe? She feels like a musical creation designed to hit all the right notes for listeners. Want that overproduced pop metal? You got it. Looking for some Knocked Loose vibes? No problem.
It seems like Poppy just wanted to cash in with this record, and guess what? She totally succeeded. The whole album feels so basic, so manufactured, and so empty that it's actually impressive. In a few years, we might regret loving this album; it's the completely gentrification of metalcore, blending mindless pop with metal.
The riffs are so barebones. Remember when riffs where actually riffs? Yeah, those times are long gone. Now those "riffs" are relegated to neutered djent chugs, and not even the cool kind of djent. Theres no intricate rhythms here. No polyrhythms. No intricate precise guitar riffs that actually had chords and great depth. It takes the subgenre and dumbs it down to the very lowest common denominator. Remember when bands actually felt like bands? Not anymore. The band members in this album are faceless hired guns. What an actual band brought to the table back in the day was personality. Each member had their own quirk to get invested in.
Honestly, it could all be fine and dandy if Poppy at least provided anything extraordinary lyrically or vocally, but that's not the case here. I mean, "New Way Out"?, "Crystallized"?. There's just not much depth to any of these songs. It's not like other similar artists who build an entire lore that creates more intrigue to be invested in. The lyrics feel too generic.
These lyrics dont tell much about Poppy's personality, or what she's afraid of, or what gets her emotional. Theres no moments on the album where it feels like she really means what she's saying. There's no moments of her voice breaking because she's so invested into what she saying. Everything is too overly refined and processed to a fault. All authenticity is ironed out.
It's very clear on this album that the corporations have well and truly needled their way into metal. Poppy is just another product to them. There's no artistic integrity. There's no expecting Poppy to make some extremely unique album. All they see is dollar signs and how do you make that reality the most? Make the most bland, and uninspired pop metal ever made of course.
It was exciting to hear that Poppy was making a return back to metal, but "Negative Spaces" falls so low of expectations, it is a tragedy. She used to be very experimental. "I Disagree" sounded like nothing else, now this album sounds like everything else. You can hear Poppy's new pop album disguised as a metal to the core album at your local supermarket today! *says the AI robot that definitely helped write this album*.
