Abandon The Band are a new multi-media project headed up by drummer Todd Sipes (ex-Dig The Grave, Mythborn, etc. ). Operating as a collective of sorts, that project has revealed its debut album “‘Tis A Fearful Thing To Love What Death Can Touch“, for which a February 26th release date has been set. That record draws upon Sipes‘ passion as an urban-exploration photographer and features a considerable of metal star power.
Among the participants are Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach, who guests on the lead track, “Jazzland“. There’s a video for that to be seen below. Spineshank/Silent Civilian vocalist Jonny Santos also appears, as does Jonah Matgranga of Far, etc. fame and more.
A press release went on to spell out Sipes‘ vision for this project:
‘Each of the album’s 10 tracks features a different guest vocalist, among them Jesse Leach (Killswitch Engage, Times of Grace), Jonny Santos (Spineshank, Silent Civilian), Jonah Matranga (Far, New End Original), and Jei Doublerice (Despite Exile). Rich Gray, bassist for Canadian thrash institution Annihilator, plays on three tracks.
Every song on the album is dedicated to a specific abandoned place in the United States — and every one of those places was photographed by the man who wrote the record. Todd Sipes is a Bay Area metal drummer. He played in Dig The Grave, whose single “ISO” drew a Loudwire feature and reaction videos from members of Mastodon, Lamb of God, Trivium, Sepultura, Anthrax, and Mudvayne, and before that in Mythborn and Tree of Shame, both alongside members of Nuclear Rabbit. He is also, for the last 15 years, an urban-exploration photographer with two published instructional books on the subject.
On ‘Tis a Fearful Thing…, Sipes wrote all 10 songs, played every drum part, and took every photograph.
The lead single takes its name from the theme park that opened in eastern New Orleans in 2000 and sold its last ticket on August 21, 2005 — eight days before Hurricane Katrina. The park sat under brackish floodwater for over a month and stood derelict for nearly 20 years, becoming the most photographed ruin of the storm and a recurring filming location for Hollywood’s vision of the end of the world. Demolition finished in March 2026. The site is now bare ground.
“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,” says Sipes.
Several of the album’s locations have been lost since Sipes photographed them. The Kirkbride building at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey — reputed to have had the largest continuous foundation of any building in the United States until the Pentagon surpassed it in 1943, and where Woody Guthrie was a patient when a 19-year-old Bob Dylan came to meet him — was demolished in 2015. The main building of the Nevele Grand Hotel, one of the last great Borscht Belt resorts, burned in January 2025. And on June 3, 2026, the administration building of the Hudson River State Hospital — a National Historic Landmark designed by Frederick Clarke Withers, on grounds laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux — was destroyed by fire during its own restoration. The cause remains under investigation.
Sipes furthers, “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 ten vocalists in person. Guitars across all ten tracks were played by Josh Williams in South Africa. The only musicians on the record Sipes has shared a room with are the bassists — Erik Robertson, Kevin Ames and Gabe Ausiello, friends he has played in bands with for years.
TRACK LISTING:
“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 + Charlie Louse)’
