Not About to Die was a bootleg cassette of scrappy Wire demos recorded in the late 1970s that circulated among EMI employees in the early 1980s. Wire were in the middle of hashing out some ideas for what would be their second and third albums, Chairs Missing and 154, respectively, but Not About to Die was considered to be nothing more than a work-in-progress that was certainly not for sale...

But Wire never seemed too keen on Not About to Die’s existence. They had no problems with Document & Eyewitness, a warts-and-all live show known for being especially confrontational, but they ignored these demos for decades until now. With a remastered touch and some new artwork, Wire’s label Pinkflag has made Not About to Die an official release.

In terms of post-punk rock ‘n’ roll, the “punk” side of Wire’s inner equation was doing most of the heavy lifting in their early days. By the time the band recorded these demos, their sound was in a state of flux that only proper studio time could fully capture. Songs that appeared on Wire albums like “Being Sucked in Again”, “On Returning”, “Once Is Enough”, and “Two People in a Room” unsurprisingly sound like late 1970s stripped-back post-punk. The pieces are there; they just needed that extra boost to make them a little less punk."

- John Garratt, Pop Matters