The Roundhouse in Camden, a rebellious outpost for musical expression since 1966, was originally a railway engine shed containing a turntable for rotating trains. Spinning tonight is the Constantly Nowhere tour, consisting of the creative whirlwind Poppy, supported by Ocean Grove and Fox Lake.
Poppy
The Roundhouse, Camden – 10 March 2026
Words: Sean Titley
American-born singer Poppy, once a teenage bubblegum pop artist, has since evolved into a modern, Brat, blistering alternative/Metalcore act, though her Christmas 2025 cover of Last Christmas by Wham suggests a lingering, ironic and commercial affection for the pop machine she has mostly dismantled.
Tonight, showcasing her newly released album Empty Hands, the energy is turned up to the max with the Poppy sound of distorted guitars and breakdown, screaming and clean vocals, electronic/industrial sounds and big pop-style hooks.
A ten-foot-high black monolith of a drum riser loomed on the stage, flanked by beaconing Hollywood-style spotlights that sliced through the darkness, while a glitterball-encrusted microphone, that felt like a relic of a lost pop era, stood ready for Poppy’s entrance.
Opening with a pre-recorded, monotone, spoken word track declaring we have entered “the House of Poppy” and that you have come in with “your masks, your names, your practised faces, but none of that will survive in here,” was an exultation to party and primal scream.
The band, all in black, wear masks similar in design to the Japanese Kabuki style or the Crazy 88 from Kill Bill. Unlike Babymetal’s band (who Poppy collaborated with on From Me To You), the band is not at the back but front of stage and is far more disconcerting as a result. This is reminiscent of horror movies like The Strangers.
Setting the theme of what lies beneath our facades, this is most obviously expressed in Poppy’s song Scary Mask. With a fairly minimal set, this is sophisticated theatre craft, encouraging the audience to let their guard down and go absolutely nuts, which they duly do.
Crowd surfers surf, and recyclable plastic beer glasses fly through the air as Poppy arrives in a steampunk style, cut off white ball gown, and the madness begins.
Opening with Bruised Sky and BLOODMONEY, the crowd is pumped, but they really erupt when Scary Mask is played, with the pit opening up seemingly with no warning, sending the young crowd bouncing off the walls and each other. Public Domain kept the Roundhouse a sea of moving bodies as the cascading chorus took hold.
Bathed in red lighting, Poppy kicked off the song Concrete by getting an enormous circle pit going, pointing out that it’s the Roundhouse, you are supposed to move around.
Next, the crowd is incited by Poppy to go absolutely feral during The Centre’s Falling Out”, leading to the wild dancing increasing. Anybody Like Me has a headbanging beat that is met with an appropriate response, no doubt leaving a number of the crowd considering visiting a chiropractor the next day.
Between enormous blast jets of white smoke, the surfing, mosh pitting, dancing, jumping and general mayhem continues through Crystallised, Time Will Tell, and V.A.N [Violence Against Nature], which was mercifully enjoyed non-violently.
Excellent songs from the new album Empty Hands and If We’re Following The Light followed, which opened up the biggest wall of death of the night, and brought the main set to a crunching conclusion.
An encore of the New Way Out was what I am sure the sweaty, buzzing, happy, packed out, 3,000-plus Roundhouse crowd would have all wished for as they simultaneously tried to leave through one exit.
Poppy’s petals are pretty, but look underneath, and you are in for a dark and wild time.
Fox Lake
Hailing from Denver, Colorado, Fox Lake opened the night by setting a high-impact tone that blended Metalcore, Hardcore, and hip-hop influences. Right from the off, the crowd were absolutely in full momentum.
A particular standout was a young guy, wearing a black and white stripey jumper like a cartoon burglar, repeatedly launching himself from the mosh pit and onto other people’s shoulders, who, so early in the gig, clearly was not expecting to be picking a boot out of their ear.
Their set featured crushing riffs with the band having a casual Americana swagger on stage. The pits opened within a minute of them taking the stage, driven by hip-hop style dancing and a drummer who performed like a “demented cobra,” repeatedly spitting in the air while maintaining innovative, shifting, slowing and speeding up beats.
Against a digital background of red and white, the band kept igniting crazy circle pits. The vocalist eventually donned sunglasses, who knows why, and encouraged the moshers to make the security guards’ lives less boring by coming over the top again and again, at this point, veering into intense Death Metal style vocals and ending the intense set with a battering array of red strobes.
Fox Lake are a visceral jolt to the system. Missing them is an error if picking up this tour at later venues.
Ocean Grove
Australia’s Ocean Grove were next on the bill, bringing their Nu/Alt Metal sound to the London stage. Never having heard of the band before, they sounded great on Spotify before going to the gig, so were highly anticipated. The set predominantly was a hip hop vibe blended with punk, electronic elements, and heavy riffs.
Their aesthetic was short-haired and eclectic. Frontman Dale Tanner sported a grey tracksuit, while the lead guitarist wore a mullet reminiscent of Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys. They initially struggled to get the crowd jump, jump, jumping, as they repeatedly instructed and failed to get a circle pit going when the mob were encouraged to.
Spotify polish does not always translate to live mania, and for at least the first half of the set, the energy stayed mostly behind the monitors.
The tide started to turn when they played a song that needed phones up and torch lights on. From that moment, engagement improved, and their “high-energy” performance eventually won the crowd over.
During the penultimate song, the lead guitarist took over the vocals and the singer took over the lead guitar, which injected a fresh jolt of adrenaline, but a glitch with the lead guitarist’s microphone meant the vocals sounded turned down.
The set culminated with the final song generating an enthusiastic wall of death and finishing with intense red light strobing, which felt a bit cut and paste from the Fox Lake finale. Not sure if the revved-up and won-over crowd cared.
