“It feels like you’re living outside of society’s rules,” says frontman Austin Sparkman
Boston hardcore band Haywire recently took over Times Square for a guerilla performance of “Flex Your Head,” off their new album I Don’t Want to Say Goodbye — camera crew in tow. The resulting chaotic video — directed by Luis Hernandez and shot by Wes Knoll, Anthony Ryan Tripoli, and Stephen Michael Simon — is out now.
“It feels like you’re living outside of society’s rules,” frontman Austin Sparkman previously told Rolling Stone of the band’s penchant for playing under bridges and other unconventional venues. “Like all these missing puzzle pieces from under the couch all link up under a bridge and light shit on fire.”
That’s what happened the other week in that ninth level of tourist hell, when the band tore through “Flex Your Head” and half of 2024 track “Haywire” before the cops shut it down. Fans showed up in droves, though, and turned the streets outside the M&M store into the pit.
The song itself is about this kind of community — and the interlopers that sometimes parachute into it. “‘Flex Your Head’ is mostly just based around people that get into certain things, whether it be music or any kind of subculture, and they’re kind of like culture vultures,” Sparkman says.
“I feel like a lot of subculture is growing exponentially and it’s reaching these people who maybe are also fucked up that it never would have reached before the internet,” he adds. “But I believe it also lets people feel like they know more than they do from just habitually staying on the internet, not actually going out and meeting people and learning about whatever subculture you’re representing.”
Haywire has been immersed in that culture since forming in 2023, going on to play 96 gigs in 101 days across all 50 states in the summer of 2025. “I just try to do everything to the extreme,” Sparkman says.
