Photo Credit: Alana Lopez
Have you had enough? This is both the name of the song that Poppy opened her show with, and what my brain said at the end of her set, after an hour of ceaseless and thrilling pop-metal pummeling. The unclassifiable Poppy brought her They’re All Around Us tour to Boston on Friday, 4/4, to a jam-packed House of Blues in support of her truly excellent 2024 album, “Negative Spaces.” It was set to be a night of catchy rhythms and deafening guitars, and it delivered on all fronts.
Before Poppy was an opener, House of Protection, who are not an evil universe of local favorites House of Harm. Seeing as Poppy’s music is a real melting pot, I decided to go into this band totally blind – to say they crushed it is an understatement. The duo – guitar and drums, with both men handling vocals – put on one of the most energetic sets Boston has seen in a while. Stephen Harrison and Aric Improta both got their start in Fever 333 and, although they’ve departed that group, they carry the same chaotic noise-punk influences. Harrison was in the crowd singing and playing in the midst of a circle pit on the second song. At one point the band paused so Improta could do a backflip. At another, Harrison encouraged three circle pits and said, “If you get hurt, you’ve got two days to recover.” The two guys never took a second to breathe during their 30-minute set, and it wasn’t because they were compensating for anything; the music was excellent. Improta is an outstanding drummer, and the duo produced the same blend of industrial-rap-nu metal fusion that Poppy does. They were utterly electrifying, and had the crowd in the palm of their hands. Luckily, there weren’t many latecomers on this night – the HOB was already pretty packed when House took the stage.
Photo Credit: Alana Lopez
Ultimately though, the people were there for Poppy. Although Poppy has lived in LA for years and did not address her local connections, she is a Massachusetts native – we take those. The locals shared their love for Poppy as she emerged suddenly through a curtain dressed in all-white, contrasting with her three bandmates in all black with ski masks, and jumped into the aforementioned “have you had enough?”. Poppy has had a bizarre career trajectory, starting off as a satirical YouTuber and bubblegum pop artist before shifting, abruptly, into sludgy metal. She’s found herself at the forefront of the nu-metal revival, and a younger shift towards incorporating metal into other genres. All of this came to head last summer when she joined Knocked Loose for a raucous performance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” which became immediately controversial because it could’ve been terrifying to the small children watching at 1am. Have no fear, Poppy brought this energy all night.
Poppy’s set only lasted around an hour, but she and her band burned through sixteen songs. The set was split pretty evenly between songs from her recent Negative Spaces album and 2020’s I Disagree, an album she had to pause a tour for due to COVID. She also busted out “Scary Mask,” one of her first metal songs, and “V.A.N.,” a Bad Omens song she guests on. The set showed how well-rounded she is, incorporating catchier songs like “I Disagree” and “crystallized” alongside heaters like the industrial “Sit/Stay” and the pummeling “the center’s falling out.” The latter was the wildest song performed all night, with full screaming and Stephen Harrison coming back out for guitar and vocals. Poppy was animated all night, often jogging in place as if she was in Stop Making Sense, but she really let loose during “center.” After fourteen songs, the band walked off, followed soon by a voiceover conversation between Poppy and an unseen entity, hyping the crowd for an encore. She performed the recent songs “they’re all around us” and the softer “new way out” to bring the night to a close. It was a fun, raucous night and a victory lap for a local gone big.
Check out all of Alana’s photos from the show below.
