From the stage to the comic book page, The Funeral Portrait is doing more than making music that resonates with fans — they’re building a spooky, lore-filled universe.

Comprised of frontman and founder Lee Jennings, guitarists Cody Weissinger and Caleb Freihaut, bassist Robert Weston and drummer Homer Umbanhower, The Funeral Portrait has been riding a wave of massive success. From playing large-scale festivals like Rockville and Download, to touring with Ice Nine Kills, to landing a No. 1 spot on the Billboard charts for “Holy Water” featuring Ivan Moody, their rise has been over a decade in the making.

The band has come a long way from its early days as a pop punk outfit playing local gigs around Atlanta. Today, they’re not only crafting deeply personal tracks, which often delve into Jennings’ OCD and anxiety — they’re expanding the rich, fictional world of Suffocate City. With mysterious Icons, intricate storylines woven through their 2024 full-length Greetings from Suffocate City, theatrical live shows (known as Devotion Ceremonies) and a brand-new graphic novel that ties it all together, The Funeral Portrait offers fans (aka the Coffin Crew) an immersive, horror-inspired experience like no other.

PopHorror recently caught up with Jennings to peek behind the coffin drapes and talk about TFP’s evolution, the impact of Halloween Horror Nights on their creative direction, their partnership with INK’s Spencer Charnas and, of course, what’s next for the townspeople of Suffocate City.

PopHorror: The Funeral Portrait has been having such a busy year so far! “Holy Water” is No. 1 on Billboard, you’ve been playing a bunch of festivals and there’s a few back-to-back tours coming up.

Lee Jennings: Three back-to-back tours! It’s kind of crazy. Here’s our year so far. We did about two weeks of headlining shows and that rolled into a tour with Catch Your Breath — that was about a month and a half. And then we had about two weeks off before we went out with Ice Nine Kills. So we had dates with them, then we had dates with The Used and then we had dates with Underoath, with some headlining shows in between all of that. During that tour too, we had a bunch of festivals. We ended the tour with Ice Nine Kills in South Carolina, then we drove to Atlanta, flew out of Atlanta the next day to go to Download Festival in the UK. We played that and then we flew back here, and now we’ve been off for, like, three and a half weeks.

But we’re about to go do a bunch of other festivals. Oh, my God, that’s going to be crazy. We’re doing Warped Tour in LA, so we’ll fly out to that one. After that, we’re off for two weeks and then we go on our new tour with Ice Nine Kills, Dayseeker and Kim Dracula. Right after that tour, we go do In This Moment and Dayseeker, and then we’re home for two weeks. Then we go to Europe with this band called The Rasmus and we’re doing a full Europe tour for a month and a half. That ends us home around Dec. 10 and then we’re off until late January.

PopHorror: That’s all so exciting! Do you try and plan stuff for those off days?

Lee Jennings: I count down the days. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got five days and in those five days, I need to go to Disney World. I need to try and go to Epic Universe because I haven’t been yet. I need to try and do all these things.” And then I’m a huge Halloween Horror Nights fan. So I’m trying to plan where I can go to the one in Vegas because they’re opening up that year-round one. It opens up in August, but I don’t think I can go until around Halloween time, which is going to be so busy. It’s going to be a pain in the butt. But at this point, I’m going to the one in LA this year, the one in Orlando and the one in Vegas. If I’m going to be off, if I’m going to have a few days to myself, I want to spend it doing something fun.

PopHorror: How big of a Horror Nights fan are you? Do you go often?

Lee Jennings: Yes! But here’s the deal — I grew up not really liking horror. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Goosebumps. That was as much as I could take. But I loved spooky stuff. I grew up loving — and I think this is how I got into dark things — the Monster Truck Grave Digger because he’s super spooky, right? Which is crazy because I actually have upstairs in my living room, a whole door side of Grave Digger that a fan gave me. He apparently worked for Monster Jam for, like, 10 years and he just has so many random pieces in his house. He was like, “Listen, this is the biggest piece I have and I don’t need it. It’s just taking up too much room.” So he brought it for me and I was like, “Oh, my God.” So that was a big moment. I was like, “That’s sick.”

It’s probably one of the coolest gifts I’ve gotten, at least a non-made gift. I get a lot of handmade gifts, which are really cool. I get T-shirts, which are funny, with sayings on it or stuff that I’ve done, things that I’ve posted online, which is really fun. I love that kind of stuff.

But I think for me growing up, I was just a scaredy cat. I think a lot of it comes from my family scared me a lot when I was younger because it was funny. So then I just grew up being scared all the time. What I used to say is, “Listen. My life is good enough. I don’t need to be scared.” That was until I went to my first Halloween Horror Nights, which was ’21 in Orlando. That was the year that was still COVID. They had all this paper up, they had shower curtains between you and the horror actors. They all had masks on and you had to wear a mask, which was fine and I was all for it. But I think that helped me not be so scared and kind of get it.

How Halloween Horror Nights Changed Everything

PopHorror: What ended up being your favorite part? Did that experience expand your horizons in horror?

Lee Jennings: My first house I went into was Beetlejuice because I love Beetlejuice and I was like, “I’ve gotta go there.”

PopHorror: You’ve got the perfect hair for it!

Lee Jennings: Oh, I know, right! But here’s the deal — I fell in love. And after that year, I went back and I watched all these mini docs on YouTube about the lore and all these things. I was like, “Okay, I really like this idea.” They have these Icons. They have Jack, the Conductor, the Pumpkin Lord, I think is his name now. They literally have all these people and they keep adding. I was like, “What if we do that for The Funeral Portrait? What if we have these Icons that represent each one of our songs, or at least the main songs?” Because not every song has an Icon, but at least the main songs, the singles. So I was like, “I’m gonna steal that idea.” And that’s kind of what brought us to do these Icons, which are on the cover.

We have the Angel, the Alien and the Night Terror. For me, I love being creative. Sometimes I’m not the best at being creative, but I’m a very big picture guy. The best part is having Caleb, who’s our guitarist and he also plays keys, he’s the backup singer, he does all the harmonies, all that kind of stuff. He’s also one of the main songwriters in the band. I’ll come up with this idea and I’ll call him, and him and I will talk for three hours and hash it out. He’ll say, “Well, what if it’s an Angel?” And I’m like, “Well, what if the Angel has arrows through like a voodoo doll?” “But it’s still an Angel?” “What if she’s got these tears running down?” “What if there’s actual blood?”

And then when we were coming up with the idea of the cover art, we made sure to have the icons all be real. They’re not CGI-ed. The background of the cover art is CGI, but actually drawn in, not AI. Never. But we were like, “Well, what do we do?” Because we don’t want to just have them there. We said, “Let’s turn them into statues!” So basically they’re the guardians of Suffocate City and that’s where the whole lore came to and that’s why we have a comic book, and that’s why there’s everything now! It’s just one thing after the next.

Expanding the Lore

PopHorror: I love when a band has a storyline. I always think of Green Day’s American Idiot with St. Jimmy and Jesus of Suburbia. Tell me more about the comic book/graphic novel. How involved were you with the creation of that?

Lee Jennings: Extremely! I think Caleb and I came up with the story half and half throughout time, not sitting down. The label was like, “Okay, you’re releasing this song,” and we’re like, “Okay, now we have to fit it into our lore.” Where it started to get real was when we released “Generation Psycho” and that’s when we brought in the Night Terror. Now we have this guy and his name’s Irving Westhound, and he does this Twilight Zone-ish fake TV show. His son gets taken by the Coffin Crew Cult, he thinks. Long story short, his son’s a misfit. His son doesn’t fit in and he wants a place to fit in, so he finds the Coffin Crew Cult. He finds Suffocate City and he feels like he belongs there.

Caleb and I developed this story. We’re sitting down, we’re writing as we go, we’re doing what we can. And we kept saying, “We need to make this into a comic book or graphic novel or something.” I think once you read it, it’s what we wanted to do with all the music videos that we couldn’t fully do right now. It does follow the videos, but it’s if we had about a $500,000 budget for each video.

It’s great because that’s the idea of what we’re going to try and do for the next record. We’re going to try really hard to double down on the lore. We’re going to double down on really investing in the videos and the ideas of our band. The songs, they are important, but I think we’re really going to double down on the imagery for the next record. For us, it’s very important because so many bands, they kind of miss that factor. Especially growing up, my favorite bands were all into that stuff. They were very theatrical.

PopHorror: Can you speak more about the process of creating the graphic novel and putting all of the lore together in one spot?

Lee Jennings: Yes, we worked with Z2. We played Louder Than Life last year and Josh [Bernstein], the owner of Z2, was there. They had a booth and were doing interviews. Him and I sat down and I was like, “Listen, I know you kind of know about my band, but let me tell you everything.” And as soon as I told him, he’s like, “We gotta do one!” And so we started putting together a lore Bible basically. And a lot of it came from our fans.

We had some fans type out a Google Doc of everything that they thought they knew. I took that and went through it, and I was like, “Okay, well that’s wrong. They thought they knew, but it’s actually this.” I fixed this, I fixed that in this Google Doc and I sent it to Z2. They started talking and they got — you know Alan Moore who did The Watchmen — they got his daughter [Leah Moore], who also makes comics. So she is the one who wrote the whole thing, wrote the script, put into words what Suffocate City is. It was really cool getting to see it. She sent the whole thing and I was like, “Wow, this is a book, let me sit down.” I read the whole thing and I fixed one or two things, but I was like, “Wow, this is it.” I didn’t have to do anything. It was so easy.

They even said, even the illustrator, he was just like, “You guys spelled it out for us because you did it in the music videos. All we’re doing is we’re taking the music videos and just amping them up.” So it was really cool to see what happens in this graphic novel because for me, again, all of my favorite bands growing up, they did graphic novels or they were just very organized with their creativity and what a lore of a band really means.

More Than Music

PopHorror: Who were some of your favorite bands?

Lee Jennings: Of course, My Chemical Romance. You even said Green Day. With American Idiot, I love rock operas. I love a very conceptual record. From Coheed and Cambria, My Chem, even bands that maybe weren’t even full on concept like The Used or even some weirder stuff like The Blood Brothers, those weird bands that maybe people are like, “Why do you listen to this?” And I’m like, “Well, because there’s a story.” Even now, modern day, I really look up Ghost. I think the brand Ghost is a modern day Misfits. It is literally the next coming of the Misfits.

I think they figured it out. It took them a long time because I remember seeing them for the first time 12 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago, when they opened up for Mastodon and they just had the outfits and it was really out of place. It was like, “What is this?” They had no set pieces, no lighting. It was just the venue lighting. It was like, “What are these guys in these outfits doing?” I was like, “Oh, this is kind of cool. It’s like classic rock, stoner rock. This is kind of cool, I’m into it.” And then I saw it evolve before my eyes because I was early in on Ghost when it was Ghost B.C. I was like, “Oh, this is sick.” Now they’re one of the biggest bands in the world and they don’t even have bands that open for them. They just put on a show.

That’s something that I like the most about them, is it’s a show. And that’s something that we as The Funeral Portrait are trying to do. I do like it when kids connect to the songs and that kind of stuff because that’s very important. But the thing is, that’s almost too easy, right? To me, any band can make a fan connect to a song. But to connect to a live performance, that’s a whole new world that a lot of people don’t do. And that’s why we’ve involved the Icons and everything’s kind of involved in that sense.

The Road to Suffocate City

PopHorror: Can you talk about the evolution of The Funeral Portrait, including the lore and the band as a whole? I’m sure this all wasn’t something that you had since day one.

Lee Jennings: No, it started in probably 2012. We used to be called Cosmoscope. Completely different band members from what it is now, completely different music. We don’t play any of the old stuff. But what it was, we were a local band and we wanted to get out of being a local band. But how do we escape the local band world? We could do well locally. We could sell 200, 300, even sometimes 500 tickets. It was great. But what do we do? Where do we go from here? So the idea was, let’s rebrand. So all those same guys, we rebranded as The Funeral Portrait and we released an EP, and it did well. We started doing well. We started touring right off the bat, doing decent tours, etc.

Then it was time to do a record and the record flopped. The record did not do well at all. The big reason why is because I felt like I was losing what I thought The Funeral Portrait was. It was about being very emotional, vulnerable, real, down to earth. And everyone else that was in the band at the time didn’t feel that way. They wanted to be very avant-garde, far off in the distance, very artsy-fartsy, which I’m all about. I’m down for the lore to be like that, but not the music to be like that. I need people to connect to what I’m saying, not having to go onto Google Translate and be like, “What does he mean by this sentence?”

So what we decided is, all the original members quit the band except for me. I was like, “Well, I’m going to continue this.” I talked to them all and they said, “Go. Do it. It’s your thing.” They knew already it was my thing, and I was doing all the business stuff and almost everything anyways. So I found all new guys and we basically restarted from the ground up. We kept the same name, I just redid a little bit of the branding. I was like, “Okay, this is what The Funeral Portrait is. This is what I want to go for. Let’s start writing songs.”

We started writing songs and, in 2019, we released “Holy Water” for the first time and it did super well. It started taking off. And we’re like, “Whoa, okay. This is a thing now. Okay, cool. This is perfect. Let’s see what happens.” We signed a record deal and then 2020 happened. We hit COVID era. And COVID era really scared us because it was like, “Well, everything that we’ve worked for for almost 10 years is now gone. What do we do? How do we do this?” It took a lot in me to even make a TikTok account because I was like, “I don’t want to be that band. I don’t want to be cringy.” But I started showing people who I am, what I am and what the songs are about.

And then we started releasing more songs. The first song that we released off this record was “Voodoo Doll.” With that, we created the Angel and people started getting it tattooed on them, or they started getting lyrics. It went fast. “Voodoo Doll” went super fast. And then we did “Alien” and that was a slow one, a slow rise because our fans super dug it, but I don’t think the public really dug it. We were like, “Okay, what’s next?” “Generation Psycho,” kind of the same thing. The fans dug it, but the people outside didn’t really get it. I was like, “God, dang it, it’s over. No one’s getting it. They got ‘Voodoo Doll,’ but they don’t get anything else.'”

Then we released “Dark Thoughts” and that’s when it just all happened. It was because people really connected with what it’s about. It’s about my OCD, my anxiety and these dark thoughts that are in my mind, that just take control and will not let me sleep, won’t let me do anything. With that, the lore continued. Then we had “Suffocate City” and “You’re So Ugly When You Cry.” You name it, we did it. Now we’re at the point of, we want to bring back lore because the problem is, we kind of stopped when the record came out.

The issue there is, we don’t have time. That’s where the graphic novel came in handy because we were able to bring a closure to the lore without having to do a whole new music video. And that’s something that, maybe down the line, we’ll do more. I think when it comes down to the next record, we’re so ready to evolve and to bring this whole thing larger than life.

PopHorror: Do you see yourself continuing with these same Icons or will the lore be evolved with new ones?

Lee Jennings: Definitely new. I think these will remain, but I don’t think they’re going to show the way that they were. Maybe they will evolve, maybe something will happen. It’s hard because, here’s the deal — I never got to do the show that I want to do. Well, I did once in Atlanta last year. We sold out a 600 cap club, which is a big deal for us, and we got to put on the show that we want. We got to bring out the Icons in their outfits. They came out for each song and at the very end for “Suffocate City.” We had confetti and it was this whole moment. We got our No. 1 Billboard plaque and all this stuff, and it was this great thing.

But since then, I’ve been chasing that show. I’ve been chasing doing that. This year, we’re just busy. This year, it’s grow the brand, grow the band, do these tours. I think next year, I’ll finally be able to take the show that I want to on the road. We’ll be able to bring out one of the Icons on tour or someone to play multiple Icons, or whatever it is. We’re seeing how it goes. But that’s what I want. I need that. I think the fans want that.

I see it while touring with Ice Nine, that half of it is the music and half of it is the show. If you look at a band like In This Moment, it’s the same thing. I think In This Moment is more about the show — no offense to her — than the music because I see it. She’ll sell a bunch of tickets and it’s just people being like, “Oh, my God, this is such a great show.” I think Ghost does it, Rob Zombie to Alice Cooper to whoever it is that does this theater rock where, yes, people are connecting with the music, but they’re there to see a show. And that’s what we’re about to do. Next year, we’re gonna put on a show.

TFP x INK

PopHorror: Going off of that, you guys seem to have a really strong working relationship with Ice Nine Kills. I feel like a lot of your fans are probably fans of theirs as well. How did that all start?

Lee Jennings: It started at Silver Scream Con, it was the second year they did it. We opened the show that they had and we did a signing at a booth in the convention. I don’t even think we had a merch booth there. All of a sudden at the signing, which we did before the show, we had a two-hour-long line. We’re like, “Oh, people want to meet us. What? This is weird.” And then the show happened and it exploded. Then Spencer noticed and he was like, “Hey, I like you guys. You guys are cool. Let’s work together on stuff.”

So we talked back and forth. It took about six months of going back and forth, and he was like, “Let’s do ‘Suffocate City,’ I think that one’s gonna smash.” Sent it to him, he did it. We did a music video for it and it just went. Now, we’re about to do another Silver Scream Con. We’re about to do a whole U.S. tour with them. It’s about to be crazy.

PopHorror: I’m so excited for this tour! I’ll be at the Virginia Beach date. I’ve only seen them open for other bands, so I can’t wait to see what a full INK show is like.

Lee Jennings: Oh, wow! Well, it’s sick. I wonder what they’re gonna do because the tour that we just did with them was in 2,000 cap venues. This next tour is in mini arenas and amphitheaters and stuff. I have a feeling it’s going to be insane because the show in a 2,000 cap venue is insane. So the show that they’re about to have in this 5,000 to 10,000 cap venue that we’re playing on this tour, it’s going to be absolutely insane.

And the best part is, they are so cool, so nice. And Spencer knows what he’s doing. He really does. He is a very smart guy. He’s a very smart business man as well. I think he really does believe in what he does. They have something really cool and unique, and their fans love them. They absolutely love them. They’ll do VIP every night and every tour, and they’ll play the same venue or the same city twice a year and it’s the same people for that VIP because they love them that much. It’s become a cult for them. It’s so cool.

PopHorror: I opted for the VIP where Spencer kills you in the picture.

Lee Jennings: Yes!

PopHorror: I told my friends about it and they’re like, “What the hell are you going to?!”

Lee Jennings: Love that. It’s such a cool idea. Next year, when we do our big show that we’re gonna put on, like what we did last year, we’re doing something similar. We’re doing a VIP as well on the INK tour that’s called the Confession Booth and it’s really cool. It’s really fun, but it’s nothing super interactive. I just named it the Confession Booth because it’s just cute. But when we do our big hometown show and our big headlining tour, we’re gonna do a one-on-one confession booth and we’re gonna bring a confession booth, like a pop-up confession booth with us where I’ll sit on one side and the other person will sit on the other.

Inside the Coffin Crew Cult

PopHorror: That’s awesome! So I know that your fanbase is called the Coffin Crew and your shows are Devotion Ceremonies. Was that something that the band came up with or did the fans just kind of take it and run with it?

Lee Jennings: So the Coffin Crew has been literally since we started, I’m not joking. It started as kind of a joke because we did a crew neck sweatshirt and I said, “Buy the coffin crew sweatshirt.” And then everybody was like, “Coffin Crew…okay…Coffin Crew.” It started and it wasn’t a big deal. Yeah, we’ve been a band for 10 years and we had fans, but now we have fans. Originally, it wasn’t a thing and now it’s a thing where people get the words Coffin Crew tattooed on them.

Then we do these, we call them Devotion Ceremonies and we have this whole thing when we do a tour, either headlining dates or normally even a tour, we call it a Hex on the Nation because it’s just funny. It’s cool. It’s very cheeky. And I think that’s us — we’re very fun with everything. We don’t make it too serious, but it is serious, but we like to have fun with it. I think Ice Nine Kills is pretty serious about it. All their stuff is very murder, murder, murder and us, we’re just spooky guys.

PopHorror: How did you get your name, The Funeral Portrait?

Lee Jennings: We were thinking of names and we had this list. The only other one that I remember was called The American Scream. We needed something that was different, something that worked. Our old drummer came up with the name The Funeral Portrait. It was a song by a band called Opeth, off one of their earlier records. We just liked the name The Funeral Portrait. It was just a cool name and so we were like, “You know what? Let’s just use it.” I liked that you could shorten it to TFP if you ever wanted to, like AFI or POD or even HIM. It just worked because we didn’t want to be called Cosmoscope. It didn’t fit. It fit the pop punk band that we were doing at the time, but it didn’t fit what this new band was.

From Goosebumps to Terrifier

PopHorror: To wrap up, I’d love to speak with you more about horror! You mentioned that, aside from Goosebumps, you weren’t super into it as a kid. Which films have become some of your favorites as you’ve gotten older and more into it?

Lee Jennings: My mom always liked horror. She loves Stephen King, who’s her favorite. She’s read all of his books, she’s watched the movies. I watched some of them growing up that I could bear. For me, I think what really got me into horror was Rob Zombie. I always liked House of 1000 Corpses. I had it on my PSP and I would watch it on the way to school. So I did like it. I did. I think it was more of, I had to be really in the mood. I was more into stuff like Donnie Darko and stuff like that, which I think falls into that. It’s still kind of spooky, but it’s not horror. But then when Rob Zombie did Halloween, I watched all those, I went to the movie theater.

What really scared me, I watched — oh, my God, I always talk about this and I say I’ll never watch it again — The Strangers because it’s so real. They just pick a random house, and they go and kill people. That could literally happen to me right now. I don’t want to deal with that. But it’s wild because growing up, I guess I did watch horror movies. I just hated them because I was too scared. I was a scaredy cat. And now I love it and it’s so much fun.

What really recently got me back in and really into it was, of course, Terrifier. I think that’s a big thing for everyone. It as well, the remake of It chapter one, not No. 2. I don’t even know what they did. But for me, I really enjoy Terrifier. It’s like a band thing now too because we’ve all seen them together, every single thing that they’ve done with Terrifier. It’s really brought horror to a whole new level. We have a new horror icon with Art and I think everyone knows that. That’s also helped Ice Nine Kills a lot because they got to do that official song [“Work of Art”] with them and all this stuff. They’re really cool about the way that they treat the character.

But I’ve thought about horror and, like I said, I love theater, so for me, I love Halloween Horror Nights. I think it’s one of the coolest things ever. I love all that stuff. Hopefully one day, we could put on our own haunted house. I think it’s one of those things that we could because we have these Icons, we have this world. So it’s something that we’re developing and hopefully one day, we can do it. We’ll see what happens.

PopHorror: That would be sick! There’s rumors that there’s going to be a Terrifier house at Halloween Horror Nights this year.

Lee Jennings: I’ve seen and I think it’s real. I don’t see why not. I think he [creator Damien Leone] is very precious about his franchise. It’s just like with House of 1000 Corpses. Rob Zombie has talked about how Universal said that his movie was too gory and that he couldn’t release it. And now Universal, in 2019, did a House of 1000 Corpses house. It’s funny how that happens. But for me, I hope that there is. So far, it looks incredible. I’m very excited to go, and I’m going to go again and again and again until I can’t.

I like a lot of the original houses that they do too. I think they’re very creative and very unique. And I like the store that they do every year that you get to go walk through and they theme it. It’s just super cool that they do all these things and now horror, it’s okay to like it. I think that’s part of it.

Also — I just watched it again the other day — one of my favorites is Nope. It’s so good. It’s about, of course, aliens, so I’m like, “I’m in.” I went opening day when that came out and I watched it three more times in theaters. It’s just one of those movies that I always revisit because it’s so good, so funny, but it’s serious at the same time.

PopHorror: I’ll have to check it out. I want to see M3GAN 2.0 that just came out!

Lee Jennings: Yes, I haven’t seen that yet and I haven’t seen 28 Years Later. Is that where we’re at? Next it’ll be 28 Decades Later or something like that. But I think horror goes hand in hand with what we’re doing. That’s why, I think, we do so well with Ice Nine Kills. We are spooky, but we’re not ripping them off, and that’s very important. That’s something that I talk about all the time is when a band looks at another band and they’re like, “Oh, I like this,” but then it’s like they rip it off. It’s kind of like, “Well, what are you doing? Find you.” As soon as we found us, it started to work.

PopHorror: Yeah, definitely. INK is more murder, slasher vibes while TFP is spooky, Tim Burton-esque vibes.

Lee Jennings: Exactly!

Thanks for speaking with us, Lee! Keep up with The Funeral Portrait at thefuneralportrait.com/ and on social media.

Photo 1 by Jeremy Saffer, Photo 2 by Nathan Rogers, Photos 3-5 by Aaron March.