Oh, what a joyous day when you check the Discord server of one of your favorite bands (The Funeral Portrait) because you saw that blessed little @everyone ping in the announcements channel only to find that a new single has dropped with no warning whatsoever in the lead-up to Greetings From Suffocate City (From Beyond The Abyss: Deluxe Edition), the re-released and souped-up version of their debut album.
Out of nowhere on a random Friday (or Thursday if you’re anywhere further behind than the East Coast of the United States).
When I tell you that I ran to Spotify, it is no joke. I, and other fans, clambered our way to our favorite streaming platforms as well as over to YouTube to find the latest lyric video so that we could feast our eyes and ears on this newest “hymn”.
“Skinny Lies”
The first thing that struck me upon hitting play was the seamless blend of the bass and guitar lines. It’s the sort of sound that can be felt, and that’s just the experience with headphones. The promise of what this song will feel like live is enough to set fan’s nerves alight with excitement.
Lee Jennings hits us with a smooth, shimmering magenta melody over top of Robert Weston’s pulsing bass, and Caleb Freihaut’s haunting keys.
There are a few strong backbones to a song, though some would argue exactly what those are, or where they fall in rank. Some put drums at the top, others swear by bass lines, and others still claim that a rhythm guitar is tantamount to a song’s success. Those pieces can all be theoretically shifted around depending on your own personal taste in music theory, but there is one thing that cannot be debated.
Every song needs a good chorus.
If I’m not what you need, then I don’t wanna know
But the words in your mouth cut right to the bone
I wanna go back to what it was before
Just you and I and skinny lies
The way this chorus grabs you gives absolutely no room for anything but jamming (whatever that may mean in your case). It’s a wall of indigo and claps of neon green lightning that will be no less than electric in a crowd of people all screaming these words at the top of our lungs.
I think my favorite part, though, is the way that the breakdown of this song slams into us. It’s heavy and strikes you right in the chest with deep fissures of black that crack through the very ground at your feet. Homer Umbanhower absolutely wrecks us with those crash cymbals and drum fills right into a double-time feature just before Cody Weissinger effortlessly supports another repetition of that same addicting chorus to carry us into the end of the song.
The Funeral Portrait is currently on tour and ramping up to an absolutely insane summer full of live music, including but not limited to seven (yes, I did say seven) festival shows between now and Louder Than Life in September. It feels safe to say fans attending this upcoming Devotion Ceremonies will be graced with this newest single (and if we’re not, I think we should be allowed to have a very stern talk with these young men).
If you would like to keep up to date on the band (and you should), you can find them on Instagram, X, and TikTok all under the handle @tfp_devotion. You can also scope out all of The Funeral Portait’s previous music videos (like their most recent - Holy Water featuring Ivan Moody of Five Finger Death Punch) on the Better Noise Music YouTube.
