REVIEW: Poppy Leaves No Survivors on New Album ‘Empty Hands’
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Hector Clark
SHAPESHIFTING HAS ALWAYS BEEN POPPY’S MOST DANGEROUS SUPERPOWER — With her seventh studio album, Empty Hands, she doesn’t just bend genre, she obliterates it, emerging as a fully realized visionary unconcerned being tied to a singular genre. Hyper-pop’s synthetic sparkle collides with nu-metal heft, industrial abrasion, and flashes of her surrealist past, all threaded together by her signature machine-like voice. Across 13 tracks, Poppy sinks her teeth into catharsis and sinks her teeth harder than she did for Negative Spaces (2025).
Empty Hands is an album that understands rage as release. Sometimes, inner peace doesn’t come from forgiveness, instead, it comes from unapologetically wishing the worst on those who’ve wronged you and walking away lighter for it. Poppy arrives at that realization in full force here. Released Friday, January 23, the record feels like a purge.
Vocally, Poppy is a master of extremes. Her pop-perfect melodies glide effortlessly into blood-curdling, banshee-like screams, veering from shrill, almost uncontrollable chaos to squeaky-clean alto lines and plunging, lower-register growls that flirt with full-on pig squeals. Each shift feels intentional, a reminder that softness and brutality can coexist in the same breath.
Released through Sumerian Records, Empty Hands marks Poppy’s second collaboration with producer Jordan Fish, the former Bring Me the Horizon secret weapon whose industrial instincts continue to push her sound into darker, sharper territory. Where 2024’s Negative Spaces hinted at their destructive potential, this record fully unleashes it. Fish’s mechanical precision and metallic touch amplifies the weight of Poppy’s screams, giving them both bite and burn.
“Public Domain” kicks the door open on Empty Hands, introducing Poppy’s multifaceted world with immediate force. Built on driving guitar riffs and full-throttle industrial beats, the track pairs anthemic hooks with pounding electronic synths that drag the listener headfirst into Poppy’s universe.
That energy carries into “Bruised Sky,” where Poppy is collecting names under the bruised sky, her voice slicing through elevated layers of texture and distortion. Fish’s heavy-metal sheen is heard here, grounding the track in the same volatile realm established on Negative Spaces, while pushing it further into emotional excess. Lyrically, it’s one of the album’s most haunting moments as she sings, “How could I numb myself if God feeds on the weak?”arriving after a chilling intro that frames detachment as survival, “The only way to cope is to see you as a disease / Insisting to resolve / Resisting every prophecy / Get it off of me.”
On “Guardian,” Poppy leans fully into a modern metalcore palette, trading chaos for conviction. “When all the cards lose faith / The city’s laid to waste / I will be there, I’ll be your guardian,” she promises, creating one of the record’s most emotionally raw pivots. Here, her vocals take center stage, less weaponized, but more exposed.
A trippy vocal interlude, “Constantly Nowhere,” dissolves seamlessly into the electro-centric “Unravel.” “Unravel” moves the record forward through vulnerability, acting as a breath of air after the album’s earlier sonic onslaught.
“Dying to Forget” stands as Empty Hands’ most punishing thrashers and undeniable standout. It opens with pure force and brutality. Poppy wastes no time severing ties singing, “we don’t bleed the same / I never wanted, never needed you,” transmuting pain into power with lethal clarity. Her refusal of forgiveness cuts deepest in lines like “you don’t deserve my sympathy / it’s all yours to take, the grief and misery,” before sinking fully into visceral contempt, “rot in your piss in your shallow grave.” Sonically, it’s one of the album’s heaviest offerings with crushing metal riffs, bone-snapping beatdowns and piercing squeals that thicken the atmosphere until it feels suffocating.
“Time Will Tell” arrives as a momentary release and just enough pop flair to catch your breath between the carnage. Anchored by a commanding vocal performance that moves effortlessly between melody and screams, the track shows Poppy’s range.
Tension snaps back into place with “Eat the Hate,” an explosive cut punctuated by its relentless “BANG, BANG, BANG,” echoing like gunfire through the track. It’s confrontational, kinetic and unapologetically hostile.
Tracks like “The Wait” and “If We’re Following the Light” shift into more melodic metalcore territory with softer instrumentals within Empty Hands’ bruised landscape. Here, Poppy’s delivery smooths out, her vocals gliding from gentle melodies into hardcore, banshee-like screams with startling ease. This is shapeshifter energy at its peak, especially in the album’s latter half where effortless transitions that prove she’s a true chameleon, fully sovereign in her own realm.
The beating heart of Empty Hands may well be “Ribs.” As Poppy mourns a love slipping through her fingers, anger, acceptance, and melancholy collide through riffs and screams. “Can I hold your love between my ribs while you weigh me down to something thin?” she asks.
The closer, “Empty Hands,” rolls like end credits scorched into celluloid. It’s one of Poppy’s heaviest cuts to date, plunging into black-metal territory and sealing the album’s fate with a guttural pig squeal. Brutal. Relentless. No mercy. She unleashes her most feral instincts here echoing the same untamable intensity found in her collaboration with Knocked Loose on “Suffocate.”
Empty Hands never fades out — it annihilates.
Photo Credit: Paris Mumpower
