Better Lovers: Back To Square One After Two Decades
Better Lovers, the hardcore punk supergroup formed from the ashes of the legendary Every Time I Die, make their Australian tour debut this January. The Note spoke with members Jordan Buckley and Will Putney to discuss new music, their chaotic live show and what 2026 holds for them.
Words Thomas Jackson // Image Gabe Becerra
Better Lovers are a new hardcore punk supergroup formed from the ashes of the legendary Every Time I Die featuring former members, guitarist Jordan Buckley, bassist Steve Micciche and drummer Clayton “Goose” Holyoak and ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato. Add to this one of the busiest and in-demand people in music, super producer Will Putney on guitar, and you’ve got a recipe for one of the most exciting debut albums in recent years in 2024’s Highly Irresponsible.
Better Lovers formed after Every Time I Die released their magnum opus, 2021’s Radical. This was just before the band broke up. It was a 23-year career that vanished overnight. Since then, these three members of Every Time I Die have stuck together and started back at square one and put all their energy into creating something new in Better Lovers.
Ahead of their live debut Australian performances in January, Buckley and Putney join The Note to let Australians know what chaos to expect from a Better Lovers show. The band are known for their hectic live shows, with Puciato himself having a notorious reputation for his on-stage antics during his time in The Dillinger Escape Plan. In Better Lovers, it’s not a surprise for Buckley and Putney to look out from the stage and see Puciato fire-breathing or jumping off a balcony into the crowd.
“I was actually just putting together a post yesterday and just kind of going through all of our pictures, and I’m blown away too - no pun intended - by how crazy our sets get,” Buckley explains.
“…but that's just the world we come from. In fact, there was like a fucking thing in Times Square where Spotify was thanking Turnstile and their like one million stage diving fans, and I'm just like, ‘Wow, it's like it's a part of the human experience right now’. It’s stage diving and fucking crazy shows, they've always been a part of our lives, and now it's just like, wow, who knew? Who knew that just fucking jumping on top of people in a parking lot would be acceptable forms of behaviour? I think about this a lot. I think about how fucking weird it is that we pick up guitars and we make strings vibrate, and the way that they vibrate makes different noises, and those noises can sometimes make people jump on top of each other in parking lots. That's just such a fucking weird thing that we specialise in, I guess.”
Better Lovers released their debut album Highly Irresponsible in 2024 to ravenous praise from fans who were begging to fill the Every Time I Die-sized hole in their lives. In 2025, Better Lovers released a deluxe version of Highly Irresponsible featuring two new songs, ‘The Impossible End’ and ‘Don’t Forget to Say Please’.
“We wrote too much for the last record,” confesses Putney.
“We had so many songs that didn't really get cut; we just had too many of them. So we had to make a record; we didn't want to do a double album or go too crazy and we figured we would use them later on. So we just had a lot of stuff that was in our pocket already from this one really productive writing session we had. We did the record with like 10 [songs] that made sense and then this year, we're like, let's finish some of the other ones that are good.
“So we basically just did that, but they did come from the session, that's why they're packaged together with the deluxe. I don’t like calling those songs like b-sides because they're not. They're just songs we never finished.”
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Better Lovers have been teasing the release of their second album on social media recently. There’s no official date locked in yet, there’s no guarantee it will even be this year, but they do have a lack of touring commitments in 2026, which would leave time to go back into the studio.
“I think we’ll probably continue to write music. We're due for a break from touring anyway, so I think after Australia, we'll probably go away for a little bit and see where new music takes us,” Putney explains.
“We've been pedal to the metal for three years straight,” Jordan adds. “So we're gonna ease off. We're just gonna go for a nice country stroll instead of a 100-mile-an-hour tour. I think we all deserve a break. We knew one was coming. Everybody knows Greg has a ton of side projects. Everybody knows that I have a child, Goose has a family, Will has other stuff, Steve has other stuff, so it was like, at some point, we're all gonna have to take a break and refocus. So I think that's what is naturally occurring this year, especially with the writing. Don't get me wrong, I've written some really good stuff under pressure, but I just don't think anyone is interested in having a deadline before the music is written this time.”
For the past three years, Better Lovers have been running an annual Christmas event in December called BLissmas. It keeps the spirit of Every Time I Die’s Tid’ The Season alive and happens annually in their hometown of Buffalo, New York. When asked if Better Lovers will be celebrating this every year until the end of time, Buckley gives an interesting answer: “Man, you're picking a weird time to ask.”
“...I'll be honest man, there are a lot of Christmas festivals right now. It really added a lot of stress to our last one… So we really do have to contemplate if it's oversaturated, if it's something that needs to be cherished as something that isn't as expected every year?
“I don't know. The possibilities are endless. We just want to make sure it's done right. The last thing you want is to have something so amazing and so beautiful just go on a decline because who knows that maybe there'll be 10 more festivals this December, or maybe there will be four less festivals this December. I get it, it's a very profitable time of year to do something like that. People want to celebrate the holidays and a lot of people have grown accustomed to going to cold-weather places to celebrate.
“…I always wanted to do a summer festival. Before the Every Time I Die breakup, I was pushing for a Tid’ Stock where we did it in the summer. So I don't know man, that's the fun about being a creative person, you can kind of reinvent things. Sometimes they're the same, sometimes they're brand new, sometimes they're unexpected, sometimes they're exactly what you would expect. So, we're not really letting the cat out of the bag yet. But you know, whatever we do is gonna be fucking cool. So, that's the guarantee.”
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Fans were surprised that former Every Time I Die guitarist Andy Williams was not part of Better Lovers as well. However, Williams has gone down a different path. He has a new band Atomic Rule while also committing to his dream of being a professional wrestler. He’s been extremely successful and currently wrestles as “The Butcher” in All Elite Wrestling [AEW]. It’s the second biggest wrestling company behind WWE in North America. During the recording of Radical, Williams was juggling being a rockstar and professional wrestler at the same time. Buckley couldn’t be happier for his lifelong friend.
“We have good stories about the recording of the last record [Radical]. He would be on TNT; he'll be on live television every Wednesday night. So this fucking guy, man. We would see him on Tuesday, he would record and leave early, then get on a plane. Sometimes he would literally bring his guitar and then we would be recording Wednesday and we just have the TV on. It would be like, ‘Oh, there's Andy,’ and then we would just see him the next day again. So during the last record he was burning the candle at both ends, which is pretty much why, obviously, I don't need to retell the story, originally it was just going to be me writing music with him still [after Every Time I Die] and everything happens the way it's supposed to, and he was just like, ‘I'm doing the wrestling.’
“You can't really put that off till later, there's not really much professional wrestling opportunities for 60 and 70-year-old men. So it's like ‘I gotta grab the bull by the horns kind of thing’ and that was just great because now I still get to hang out with him and I get to be in a band with Will too and everything worked out for the absolute best.”
Catch Better Lovers performing at Lion Arts Factory on Friday 30 January. Tickets on sale now at moshtix.com.au.
