Haywire: I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye Album Review

For decades, aspiring bands were given the same advice: If you want to get noticed, play as many shows as possible. But in the algorithm-driven era, does that wisdom hold up? Haywire would say yes. In 2024, the Boston punk band issued its debut LP, Conditioned for Demolition , and the For Better or for Worse EP, but it took until the following year, when they embarked on a grassroots DIY tour that hit all 50 states, for wider audiences to hop on board. As the tour trekked on, they added impromptu guerilla shows in unconventional, not-always-legal locations and viral footage ensued. Regional covers stirred up even more buzz: Title Fight in Wilkes-Barre, Trapped Under Ice in Baltimore, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (with the Bosstones’ Dicky Barrett) in their shared home city. From there, the word-of-mouth excitement made way for tours and a split release with hometown heroes Dropkick Murphys , slots on major music festivals, and, finally, their signing to Roadrunner for their second album, I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye . On “Flex Your Head,” a 79-second hardcore song with a title that nods to the classic Dischord compilation , bandleader Austin Sparkman points a finger at newcomers on the scene—“You think you know what’s good? You been around a week!”—before referencing the adage that hardcore is “for anybody, but not everyone.” In the context of I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye , where the song’s scene politics and old-school sound make it an outlier, it comes off as a disclaimer, and Sparkman is right to believe that I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye could be a gateway for a whole lot of people. He’s no newcomer himself, having spent over a decade playing in hardcore bands including Buried Dreams and Rude Awakening, but with Haywire, he’s cooking up something a little sweeter. No score yet, be the first to add. 0.0