REVIEW: The Funeral Portrait - Live From Suffocate City

By the time Live From Suffocate City was recorded, THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT were no longer the band knocking on the door—they were standing inside the room, taking stock of what they’d built. What began as an opening-slot act playing to a few hundred people had quietly evolved into chart-topping singles, festival mainstays, and a fiercely loyal following that doesn’t just support the band, but actively inhabits their world. Captured at their first-ever Suffocate City Town Hall Meeting during a sold-out hometown show at Atlanta’s The Masquerade, this album documents a moment of arrival without ever slipping into self-congratulation. This is not a victory lap. It’s a pressure chamber.

From the outset, Live From Suffocate City feels urgent, volatile, and alive. There’s no easing into it, no gentle framing device. The crowd is already roaring as Generation Psycho tears open the set, establishing the tone in seconds; loud, unfiltered, and razor-focused. The band sound tight but unrestrained, feeding off the chaos rather than trying to control it. You can hear the hunger in the performance, the sense that this night matters. That momentum carries straight into You’re So Ugly When You Cry and Paper Mache Man tracks that balance theatrical menace with emotional exposure. Live, the edges feel sharper, the sarcasm darker, the vulnerability harder to ignore. The Masquerade doesn’t feel like a venue so much as a shared space of release, with the crowd responding not just to the hooks, but to the feeling underneath them.

Blood Mother marks a tonal shift, leaning into something more ominous and suffocating. It acts as a hinge point in the set, pushing the performance from spectacle into something more intimate and confrontational. That transition pays off with Voodoo Doll the emotional centre of the album. A song rooted in the pain of loving someone lost to addiction, it hits differently in a live setting. JENNING's vocal delivery is raw without being indulgent, and the audience response transforms the track into a communal reckoning. It’s not catharsis as escape - it’s catharsis as confrontation. From there, the album refuses to loosen its grip. Chernobyl and The Crash arrive back-to-back, detonating with controlled chaos. The guitars feel industrial and abrasive, the rhythm section relentless, yet nothing feels sloppy or overstated. This is a band that understands pacing, knowing exactly when to overwhelm and when to pull the listener deeper under.

Flowers In The Attic offers one of the record’s most immersive moments, pulling the set into darker, more introspective territory without sacrificing intensity. It’s followed by Alien which lands as an anthem for outsiders without ever feeling hollow or performative. The sense of belonging in the room is palpable - not forced, not marketed, but earned through years of shared experience between band and fans. Stay Weird injects a defiant sense of identity into the set, less a novelty and more a declaration. In this context, it feels like a thesis statement for the band’s entire ethos: embrace the chaos, reject the polish, and wear your difference like armour.

The closing stretch of the album confirms exactly why THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT now command rooms of this size. Dark Thoughts carries the weight of the band’s rise, its chorus hitting with the confidence of a song that’s lived many lives already. Holy Water erupts as the undeniable anthem it’s become - massive, communal, and charged with belief - while Suffocate City doesn’t simply end the set, it claims it. The song feels less like a finale and more like a declaration of ownership over the world the band has created. The inclusion of Casanova as the final track is a smart, almost mischievous choice. It doesn’t offer closure or resolution; instead, it sends the album out with a sharp grin and unfinished business. It’s a reminder that this band isn’t done evolving, and that comfort has no place here.

Live From Suffocate City isn’t about capturing a flawless performance or chasing nostalgia. It’s about preserving a fracture point - when ambition met belief, when a band realised the crowd wasn’t something to win over anymore, but something that had already arrived. Raw, theatrical, and emotionally exposed, this album stands as proof that THE FUNERAL PORTRAIT's rise isn’t hype - it’s history in motion.

Score: 8/10

Live From Suffocate City is released on 16th January via Better Noise Music.

Words: Mia Gailey

Photos: Angelo Joseph