In May 2020, a new studio album, "Shadow Work", was announced. It released the following July, though it failed to chart in the top 200 of albums released in the US Billboard 200 chart in its release week, selling only 600 copies, an 87% drop from their prior studio album, "DNA", in 2016. In the following December, multiple outlets reported that Brown had been fired from the band, though it was debunked as a hoax hours later. On January 23, 2021, drummer Mike Smith announced that he had left Trapt for "primarily political" reasons.