Abandon The Band, a new multimedia project led by drummer Todd Sipes (ex-Dig The Grave, Mythborn), have announced their debut album, ‘Tis A Fearful Thing To Love What Death Can Touch, due out February 26.
The 10-track release features an impressive lineup of guest vocalists, including Killswitch Engage frontman Jesse Leach, Spineshank and Silent Civilian vocalist Jonny Santos, Far and New End Original‘s Jonah Matranga, and Despite Exile vocalist Jei Doublerice. Annihilator bassist Rich Gray also contributes to three tracks.
Leach appears on the album’s lead single, “Jazzland,” which has also received an accompanying music video. The song takes its name from the former Six Flags theme park in eastern New Orleans, which closed shortly before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. The property remained abandoned for nearly 20 years before demolition was completed in March 2026.
As detailed in a press release, each of the album’s 10 songs is dedicated to a different abandoned location in the United States, all of which were photographed by Sipes. He wrote every song, performed all of the album’s drum parts, and captured the photographs that helped inspire the project.
Sipes, who has spent the past 15 years documenting abandoned locations as an urban-exploration photographer, explained what he hoped to capture through the music:
“I’d been photographing these places for more than a decade before it occurred to me that a photograph is a silent object. You stand inside a building like Greystone and there is an enormous amount of noise in it — the scale of it, the history, everything that happened there — and none of that survives in a still image. These songs are my attempt at the part the camera couldn’t get.”
Some of the locations featured on the album have since been demolished or destroyed. Among them are the Kirkbride building at New Jersey’s Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, the main building of the Nevele Grand Hotel, which burned in January 2025, and the administration building of Hudson River State Hospital, which was destroyed by fire in June 2026 while undergoing restoration.
Sipes reflected on how the loss of the latter location took on an unexpected meaning for the record:
“I didn’t set out to make a record about things disappearing. But I finished the Hudson River song years before that building burned, and now the song is the closest thing to it I still have. That wasn’t the plan. It’s just what happened while I was working.”
The album was assembled remotely across eight countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Croatia, Canada, Mexico, Cyprus and South Africa. Sipes has never met any of the 10 guest vocalists in person, while Josh Williams handled guitars across the entire record from South Africa. Bass contributions came from Erik Robertson, Kevin Ames and Gabe Ausiello, all longtime friends and former bandmates of Sipes.
The track listing for ‘Tis A Fearful Thing To Love What Death Can Touch is as follows:
- “Bolivar” (feat. Jonah Matranga)
- “Churches of Detroit” (feat. Jei Doublerice)
- “Druid Heights” (feat. Bruno Longfield)
- “Fort Ord” (feat. Enrique Delapaz)
- “Greystone” (feat. Nate Bohnet)
- “Hudson River” (feat. Evan Milosevic)
- “Jazzland” (feat. Jesse Leach)
- “Mare Island” (feat. Billy Douglas)
- “Nevele” (feat. Jonny Santos)
- “Titan I” (feat. Ray Huang and Charlie Louse)
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