The debut Tower Defense album, Mind the Menagerie, was released in April of 2013. The band started as a two-bass power trio featuring Mike and Sarah Shepherd’s double bass sounds and Jereme Frey’s bombastic drumming. They wrote a healthy batch of songs together and recorded them at Battle Tapes with Alicia Bognanno (Bully) and Jay Leo Phillips (General Trust). The recordings capture the band’s foundational blend of pop harmonies and post-hardcore inspired energy but they felt there was a missing voice to their arrangements.

A year later, the trio found themselves with the opportunity to be joined by guitarist and vocalist Currey May. The quartet quickly got to work renovating their live set and giving space for new (as yet unwritten) guitar parts and additional layers of vocal harmonies. Mind the Menagerie’s songs took on new life with May’s additions and energy. Frey remarked of the album’s songs, “They are tight little rock songs made better by having Currey added to them.” Tower Defense had reached their ultimate form.

To celebrate these sonic evolutions and the passing of 10-years from the original album release, Tower Defense is releasing Never Mind the Menagerie, three brand new recordings of tracks from the original album with all of the new parts and fuller sound. The Tower Defense of 2023 is not the Tower Defense of 2013 but these songs established the fuzzed out sound the band is known for and has built upon with every release.

The new recordings were captured at the band’s home studio, The Tanglewood Compound. Building on that interest in self-sufficiency through technology, the artwork was generated with Midjourney AI with prompting based on Kelly Kerrigan’s original painting, “Horse Mix.” The band ensured they had Kerrigan’s blessing before reinventing her works. She remarked, “I am just so in love with this rework for the anniversary album, because I think that is what I always wanted the original to look like.”

Never Mind the Menagerie is a batch of new recordings with new artwork but, more importantly, it’s a testament to a band with ten years together that still embraces a continuous drive to push themselves forward; driven by the incalculable amount of pure friendship between them. Here's to at least ten more years of Tower Defense.