Tonight is the July edition of Philthy Radio (9-11pm ET on Y-Not Radio), which will feature a block of some of my favorite music of the first half of 2026, including the most poignant and potent track off of Empty Hands, the seventh full-length from Poppy and best metal album of the year, which dropped this January via Sumerian, the metalcore artist’s home since 2020 third LP, I Disagree. And last Thursday, July 9th, we saw the local live premieres of nearly half of the album’s tracks when Poppy brought the Constantly Nowhere Tour to The Fillmore Philadelphia, which she’d last headlined just 15 months ago on the They’re All Around Us Tour.
Empty Hands is Poppy’s second consecutive (and overall) full-length collaboration with former Bring Me the Horizon keyboardist and producer Jordan Fish, who served as producer and co-writer on both records, in addition to playing the role of multi-instrumentalist on LP #7. The album serves as the perfect follow-up (and companion piece) to 2024’s Negative Spaces, Poppy and Fish’s first collaboration, bringing her anthemic metal tendencies to the forefront. Likewise, the Constantly Nowhere Tour (which actually included more than half of Negative Spaces) felt like the natural follow-up to the They’re All Around Us Tour, with an even more spectacular and arena-ready production, and even more sing-alongs.
The crowd that filled the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection’s grandest ballroom on that humid and rainy Thursday (which did not hurt attendance, although it’d be pretty un-metal if it did…) was the most eclectic crowd we’ve seen for a Poppy show yet, with ages ranging from the single-digits to the very middle-aged, and including goths (mall and traditional), kawaii enthusiasts, full-on metalheads, and lots of in-betweens (The best shirts we saw were for Pascal Laugier’s New French Extremity classic Martyrs, along with PHILTHY phriends L.A. Witch, Sextile, and Kate Nash… Okay, that last one was me.)
A tape of “Constantly Nowhere” played as the lights went down, before Poppy and her four-piece masked band — resembling the angsty offspring of the Eyes Wide Shut Illuminati — tromped onto a smokey stage to open the show with Negative Spaces opening track “have you had enough?,” only a slight variation from the last time she took to the venue’s stage. However, while last year’s performance relied heavily on I Disagree, Poppy’s first real foray into metal, last week’s show only featured the album’s lead single, “Concrete,” a bubblegum metal anthem coming three songs into the set and prompting the singer to ask for the first circle pit of the night… which was, admittedly, a highlight.
While Negative Spaces accounted for 8 of the set’s 17 songs, that included two tracks not featured on the tour in support of the record, including album-closing ballad “halo” kicking off the two-song encore and the title track, which featured Poppy on a guitar that she kept around for Empty Hands non-single “Eat the Hate,” both of which embody a brand of power pop that would’ve crushed it at Warped Tour this summer. However, the 75-minute performance’s most surprising moments came what Poppy donned an acoustic guitar for Negative Spaces’ “vital,” a sweeter and more sentimental pop-rock summertime jam that would also seem well fit for suburban skaters of the late ‘90s.
All three of Empty Hands’ singles included — “Bruised Sky,” “Time Will Tell,” and “If We’re Following the Light,” which are significantly closer to things that you would hear at a mid-aughts Ozzfest — were treated like classics, nearly receiving the audible admiration of closer “new way out” and Bad Omens collaboration “V.A.N.” And while Poppy is no longer that truly bizarre and intriguingly unsettling YouTube-spawned creature, exploring the strangest corners of pop and metal… she certainly still has the quirk of the creature who has been there… and seeing her navigate the stage of a 2,500-capacity ballroom (often finding herself on the top of some very arena rock LED platforms), putting on the kind of show you grew up seeing in summertime sheds, was kind of all you could ask of a summer rock show…
*Photos by Rob McCoy (@_realmc on Instagram)
