Album Review: The Hard Season by The Hard Season
There are things about being a lifelong member of a marginalized and misunderstood counterculture that no one tells you about; you’ve just got to experience them yourself before you truly understand. And sometimes finding that understanding is one of the hardest experiences of your life. My experience of being involved with underground punk rock for the past three decades has taught me a lot more about loss than I ever thought I’d know. To outsiders, the punk rock life might seem like one of constant partying, or defiant celebration of a life lived outside the lines. And sometimes, it really is that. But at other times, the times no one tells you about, it is a life full of struggle, sadness, and loss.
If you’re a punk rock lifer, you learn to adjust to the losses. You understand why friends of yours succumb to their struggles with addiction and depression, and end up departing this mortal coil at far too young an age. You get why people who spent their younger years living as if there was no tomorrow find that their life lasts decades less than the standard life expectancy. But the ones that hurt the most are the ones that come out of nowhere and fell people who are still in the prime of life. Joe Strummer’s death at 50 of an undiagnosed heart defect is maybe the most famous example, but there are many more closer to home, losses that don’t rock the worldwide punk scene but devastate folks from close-knit local communities.
A particularly tragic example of the latter sort of loss was the death of Garrett Berneche, former guitarist of Richmond punk bands like The Riot Before and Brand New Disaster. Garrett was felled by that cruelest and most arbitrary of human maladies, cancer – he was diagnosed in 2017 and passed away in 2019, leaving behind a wife and three young children, as well as a community of fellow musicians and music lovers who mourned his passing as the loss of one of their own.
The project known as The Hard Season formed as a way for Garrett’s friends to deal with his loss and try to find some closure through a celebration of his life. Over the last few years of Garrett’s life, he’d been recording demos of new material that he hoped to someday perform with a band. The desire to do so became more urgent when he was given a terminal diagnosis, but in the end, there just wasn’t time to put the project together before Garrett was gone.
Those he left behind never forgot the idea, though, and their unwillingness to let it die was what led to the formation of The Hard Season, a collection of Garrett’s friends and former bandmates who set out to complete his final material and bring it to the world. Those involved included former members of Brand New Disaster, Worn In Red, Forensics, and other fondly remembered Virginia punk bands. They completed the self-titled release by The Hard Season at the end of 2024, gave one live performance last December, and released the album on vinyl at the beginning of 2025.
On one hand, that’s that. Some friends got to memorialize a guy that went too soon, celebrate his life and hopefully gain some closure. That’s beautiful in and of itself, and as I was saying back at the beginning of this thing, it’s something all us punks have to learn how to do as we get older, lest the continuing parade of losses crush us under its wheels. For that reason alone, I’m so glad The Hard Season’s lone LP exists.
But it would be a goddamn shame if that’s all this album ever got to be. It deserves far more than to simply be a musical tombstone for an underrated talent. Each song carries a piece of Garrett through guitar snippets from those original demos or backing vocals contributed by members of his family. It’s only seven songs long, but those seven songs, which last about 22 minutes, make a very convincing argument for Garrett Berneche’s talent, and that his work deserved to be far more widely known while he was still here to receive the accolades.
If you’re familiar with Garrett Berneche’s previous work, or the work of the folks who’ve come together to record his songs, you won’t be surprised at the style and genre of The Hard Season. This is muscular yet melodic punk rock, with the heart-on-sleeve emotion of genre pioneers Hot Water Music and Dillinger Four, plus the catchy heaviness of legendary post-hardcore forerunners like Quicksand and Split Lip (aka Chamberlain, but I’m not talking about the post-Moon My Saddle era). This is music for the kinds of strong men who are secure enough to express their emotions without fear, even if it leads to tears.
You might find yourself shedding one or two if you pay close attention to the lyrics on this album, some of which seem to have been written after Garrett’s passing. For example, “If You Were Here,” which contains simple but deeply felt lines like “We always thought there’d be more time to share” and “There’s always time for grieving, but mostly I just miss you.” I wish I didn’t know this feeling so very well. But I do, and this song nails it.
At other points on the album, the lyrics point us forward into the days that remain for those of us still here, encouraging us to make the most of what we have, and to always strive for something better. “The Scene Sucks Because You Suck” pokes back at the all-too-frequent jaded attitudes of young punks who seem to want everything to be perfect before they ever really try. After a delicate, understated intro, the song charges into a rollicking uptempo riff, driven by thick guitar riffs and catchy vocal delivery that’s always just on the edge of tipping over into a scream. You can’t help but get caught up in the emotion, the joie de vivre that shines through every second.
“The World You Want” might be the album’s catchiest tune, and you’re bound to find yourself singing its “We’re running out of time tonight” refrain under your breath at some point. But there’s a message there too, one about always wanting to find a better world, and how even though we’ll never fully get there, it’s always our responsibility to keep pushing, keep making it better in any way we can find. “We won’t get over it while there’s still light enough to see. We won’t get over it – can’t turn around.”
“Devolution” ends the album on a perfect note, mixing melodic guitar lines and gruffly catchy vocal parts with a driving tempo that’s sure to bring legendary UK punk band Leatherface to mind. The longest song on the album (relatively speaking – it’s still only a tick over three and a half minutes) also features the most in-depth lyrics, which leave us with a message of hope for a better future even in the face of all the adversity the world shoves at us each day. This is something a person has to believe in to start a family in the 21st century, and it’s clear that everyone involved in this project, from the dearly departed Garrett Berneche to the many friends and family that came together to make this album, draws strength from an inner optimism, a belief that no matter how tough things are now, they will get better soon. “Change comes so slow, like water seeping in through cracks over time. Expands and contracts to crumble the impassable.”
Despite all the loss, despite all the hate, despite all the disturbing fascist rhetoric creeping into our daily lives, there are still signs that things are getting better. The fact that The Hard Season are able to sing bravely of the better world that remains possible, even as they reckon with the loss of a great friend, should give all of us strength to carry on, keep our heads up, and continue believing that this world can be a beautiful place full of music, life, and love.
The Hard Season’s self-titled album is available on vinyl and digital formats at thehardseason.bandcamp.com.
