It is with a heavy heart that we share the news of Jon Bunch’s death. The Sense Field, Further Seems Forever and War Generation vocalist passed away on February 1st at the age of 45. There are no other details surrounding the cause of death at the moment.
This was a man that grew up listening to hardcore punk and kept the spirit of his youth well into his 40s. He started his music career as a teenager in the mid-80s with a hardcore band called Reason to Believe. They went on to open for several legendary acts including Fugazi, Operation Ivy and The Offspring before shifting their sound to a more emotional approach and changing their name to Sense Field.
His vocal approach in Sense Field helped pave the way for countless third-wave emo and post-hardcore acts in the 00s. Though the band officially broke up in 2004, Bunch remained close with his bandmates long after parting ways musically. In fact, it’s unlikely that you will find a single negative comment from someone who has collaborated with him.
Most readers here will best remember Bunch as the vocalist and lyricist on Further Seems Forever’s Hide Nothing album. While he performed with other bands later in his life – most notably the post-hardcore band War Generation – it’s the 10 songs from his time with FSF that stick as we reflect on his life. On the song “Hide Nothing,” he wrote:
We live and we learn and we crash and we burn and we’re gone
We take what we know and we learn as we go and we runRun until that day, we can see who we are
Have the final say, we keep being who we are
As love lights the way to the last day
And no one can take it away
It’s with this that we leave our tribute. Our prayers go to his family and friends until they too see the light up ahead.
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