POPPY's seventh album "Empty Hands," released January 23 via Sumerian Records, has debuted at No. 137 on the US Billboard 200 and charted simultaneously in Australia, the UK, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland, marking her most internationally successful release to date and her first chart entry in several European countries. The achievement is particularly notable and impressive given the album's uncompromising heaviness — this is not pop music with occasional metal flourishes or heavy window dressing, but a fully committed and genuinely aggressive metalcore, industrial metal, and djent record that happens to be made by an artist with well-documented pop-world origins and a following that extends far beyond the traditional metal audience.
Produced by Jordan Fish, formerly a key member and principal songwriter of BRING ME THE HORIZON, the album boasts a production aesthetic that skillfully bridges the gap between underground extremity and mainstream accessibility without sacrificing either quality or authenticity. Fish's considerable experience crafting BRING ME THE HORIZON's genre-defying and commercially successful sound translates perfectly to POPPY's own ambitious boundary-pushing vision, resulting in songs that hit with genuine metalcore fury and authentic heaviness while maintaining the infectious melodic hooks and pristine production polish that draw curious listeners from well outside the traditional metal sphere.
The strong and geographically diverse chart performance confirms POPPY's genuinely unique position as a real crossover artist who bridges heavy music and mainstream pop audiences in a way that remarkably few artists have managed to achieve since the nu-metal era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Her considerable social media presence and striking visual artistry continue to draw curious and open-minded listeners into the heavy music world, acting as an effective gateway for audiences who might never have voluntarily explored metalcore or industrial metal otherwise. Critics have praised "Empty Hands" as her most artistically realized and creatively confident work to date, noting the conviction with which she has fully embraced heaviness as her primary musical language and artistic identity.