Back in 2023, Sobre Tormentas were singing about getting back up. Their new EP opens with somebody who has burned bridges, lost more than they can count and wants to know who they can scream at when nobody is there. On “Todo lo que me falta por gritar“, the emo and post-hardcore five-piece from San José, Costa Rica, are writing faster, pulling harder towards melodic hardcore and giving themselves room for some much less comfortable feelings.
The title translates roughly as “Everything I Still Need to Scream“, and the five songs deal with betrayal, anger, grief and people who remain painfully present long after they’ve gone. There’s pop-punk in the melodies, hardcore in the more aggressive passages and spoken word in the closing track. These are sounds the musicians have spent years playing around with, although the stories have changed quite a bit since their first record.
“For our first EP, we stuck to positive messages: rising above adversity, rewriting your own history, and overcoming whatever life throws at you. I think that was the EP we needed to make at that point in our lives and as a band,” guitarist Luis Blanco told IDIOTEQ.
That first release, “La Vida Es Una Hermosa y Constante Lucha”, had plenty of difficult memories in it. “Las memorias de abril” followed the aftermath of a relationship through regret, sleeplessness and the wish to erase certain months entirely. “El Peor Jugador” had its share of resentment and betrayal too, yet kept coming back to taking responsibility for your own life. On “Hermosa Lucha”, the band were still insisting that hope survived, even after everything had changed.
By the time they started pulling their second EP together, other emotions had become harder to ignore.
“Nunca Vuelvo” was already released as a single in 2025, and it makes an uneasy opening to the new record. Its narrator has spent so long running from old mistakes that even the act of leaving feels unresolved. Promises become a burden, familiar voices disappear and the question “¿A quién le grito si no hay nadie?” leaves them with nobody to confront. There’s a stubborn wish to stop running, although the song never pretends that doing so will make the past disappear.
“Solo estás cuando te quiero odiar” gets tangled up in another familiar problem. Somebody wants to hate a former partner, but can’t stop remembering them. The official title uses odiar, to hate, while the recurring lyric moves between that impulse and olvidar, to forget. Old photographs are being emptied of their happy memories, the same excuses keep coming back and the person supposedly left behind still occupies far too much space.
For me, this kind of emotional openness is one of the things that makes Latin American emo and post-hardcore so easy to get attached to. There’s often a warmth in the melodic writing, even when the singers are letting out everything they’ve got. Sobre Tormentas come at it with their hardcore background close at hand, Spanish lyrics that speak very plainly about ugly personal feelings and a willingness to let a song become messy when the emotion calls for it. The shifts between pop-punk, melodic hardcore and spoken word give this particular record its own character.
“Mala suerte” takes up the familiar struggle with personal failure, though the words have become less certain about what overcoming it should look like. The narrator is learning to live with mistakes, trying to cut damaging influences out of their life and repeating that they will never become what other people expect. Even with that defiance, there are moments of self-blame and disappointment. Its faster melodic hardcore approach gives those thoughts a more impatient delivery.
Death becomes a tangible presence in “Diez veces el mar”. Shadows that once might have frightened somebody now keep them company. Memories remain buried, separation becomes something to fear and the narrator keeps searching for a reason to carry on. The repeated words about hope and finding a reason to continue bring something recognisable from the first EP into a much sadder song.
The closing “Contigo, los sueños” is perhaps the most painful of the five. Somebody has been waiting for night because sleep offers the chance to meet a person who’s no longer part of their life. The dreams allow them to see each other again, with all the happiness and hurt still attached. Waking up means losing that meeting, so the narrator wants to remain asleep a little longer. By the end, imagined futures have begun to feel just as unreliable as the past.
Spoken word becomes part of the song’s delivery, giving the record a different kind of ending after its more forceful passages. The band also worked with local filmmaker Fabián Cerdas on the video for “Contigo, los sueños”, extending their collaboration with somebody who has spent years recording shows and helping musicians in the area document their work.
Luis has a pretty straightforward way of explaining why they needed these songs.
“Sometimes you’re angry, sometimes you miss someone or things that are never coming back, and you need to get it off your chest with people screaming at you, this is what this EP is about, therapy in 5 songs, for whoever needs it.”
Some of the music goes back further than the band initially realised. Bassist Marck Cerdas was recently looking through recordings on his phone when he came across a minute-long acoustic guitar sketch of “Mala suerte” from 2022. Sobre Tormentas hadn’t even released their debut at that point, yet the beginnings of this much faster song were already sitting there.
“Contigo, los sueños” took a different route. The idea appeared shortly after the first EP and became an introduction for their live shows. They kept returning to it, gradually finding enough there to develop it into a complete song. What now closes the record was once something the band played before the rest of their set had even begun.
The biggest overhaul happened with “Solo estás cuando te quiero odiar”. They had an easycore-style riff they liked, but couldn’t work out how to build a proper song around it. During recording, Manuel Corrales helped them start again and put the parts together in the studio. Marck credits the producer with having a major hand in the finished composition.
“Diez veces el mar” was another difficult one. It was among the last songs recorded, and the musicians still hadn’t settled on its direction. Steven Soto’s vocal sessions made the difference. Once his parts were down, the band began to hear the song as something they were happy with, and it became one of their favourites.
Corrales has worked with Sobre Tormentas since their early days and has also recorded bands such as Living End, Dumah and Bufonic. He handled production, recording and mixing for “Todo lo que me falta por gritar”, with Alberto “Bera” Ortiz taking care of mastering. The musicians wanted the songs to move quicker and hit more directly than their debut, and Manuel helped them work through the bits they hadn’t been able to finish alone.
There’s a whole lot of hardcore history behind these songs. Steven, Marck and Luis had already played together before Sobre Tormentas formed in 2023, and the Costa Rican hardcore scene was where they made many of their friends and started building the relationships that still keep the band playing.
“We come from the hardcore scene, that’s where we made our friends and created our best memories. We owe everything to hardcore, but the sound I love is emo, and as that famous copypasta goes, EMO BELONGS TO HARDCORE.”
When Sobre Tormentas began, their gigs were mostly alongside hardcore bands. People in that scene gave them places to play and helped them reach a crowd, even when the differences between the bands on a bill could be pretty noticeable. Steven appreciated the support, although some nights were a better match for their songs than others.
Over the following years, more musicians began working in that emo and post-hardcore space. New faces turned up at shows, and Steven noticed the old scene aesthetic making a comeback too. More importantly, there were finally enough bands around to organise gigs entirely devoted to emo.
“Nowadays, it’s possible to put together a concert featuring only emo bands. It’s incredible, haha! I’ve always wanted to see bands like this in Costa Rica, and now it’s actually happening, and I’m especially glad that it’s coinciding with the time that Sobre Tormentas has been around.”
One of those nights took place at El Sótano, the small live room inside Amón Solar in San José, where Sobre Tormentas celebrated the release of their new EP alongside Sin Caer and Nuncamuere. The show sold out, giving the musicians exactly the kind of local emo bill Steven had wanted to see for years.
El Sótano is a tiny place, with no proper stage separating the musicians from the crowd. More than 60 people can end up squeezed into the room, jumping and sweating together. Getting the sound right is often difficult. Steven still considers it one of the best places to play, and remembers the EP release set as one he wished would never end.
“At El Sótano, it doesn’t matter if you hit every note, if your screaming is “technically” good, or if the audience even knows the songs. What matters is the energy, letting go of everything, and just feel. I think that’s what emo is all about.”
Steven has quite a few recommendations for anyone trying to get into Costa Rican emo. Nuncamuere are near the top of his list, playing emotionally charged screamo that reminds him of Loma Prieta. He’s especially fond of watching them live. Sin Caer bring another side of the scene, with melodic punk roots and a sound Steven connects to early Title Fight.
There are also newer names coming through. El Chunche en Patineta have been working with pop-punk, emo and spoken word, while Atrás mis miedos bring together musicians from other established groups. For people who spent years hoping these bands would exist in Costa Rica, being able to share a night with them is already a welcome change.
Steven is careful to remember the earlier bands that kept things going when this music attracted fewer people. Rabia, Mar Negro, Contraflores, Nossara, Pacífica, Entre Lobos and Golpe Bajo all belong to that history. They weren’t making identical kinds of music. There was powerviolence, post-hardcore, screamo and pop-punk among them, and their gigs helped keep those sounds present locally.
One place to hear how much has been happening around San José is “En un abrir y cerrar de ojos”, the 17-band Costa Rican emo compilation released by Furia in February 2024. It includes Sobre Tormentas alongside Sin Caer, Nuncamuere, Nossara, Adiós Cometa, Pacífica and a whole bunch of other groups working in different corners of the same scene.
IDIOTEQ has been following these connections for some time. We previously published a multi-artist special on Costa Rican emo and screamo, and more recently returned to San José for Adiós Cometa’s split with Japanese screamo band Cissné. The latter brought together two groups from opposite sides of the world, both working through their own versions of emo and post-hardcore.
Adiós Cometa and Sello Furia have also done a great deal for the more melodic, shoegaze-leaning side of Costa Rica’s independent music community. Steven gives them credit alongside the people organising the heavier bills, particularly Destiny Recordings, Deadly Rhythm and Deathbeat Productions. Those promoters have brought touring hardcore and post-hardcore bands into the country and helped local musicians get onto the same stages.
There’s work happening around the shows too. Fabián Cerdas has filmed full sets as well as music videos, while Armando Escobar has become one of the people regularly documenting live music in the area.
Photographs, concert footage and recordings give these bands something useful to share with people who have never had the chance to see them play. Manuel Corrales has also been involved with numerous local groups, helping them get their songs recorded and released.
Those local friendships were on Steven’s mind during a trip to Mexico in February 2026. Sobre Tormentas were opening for Fiddlehead on 14 February, with Mexican hardcore band Omega also on the bill. It was the first time Sobre Tormentas had played outside Costa Rica, although three of the musicians had been through something similar years earlier.
In 2019, Steven, Marck and Luis were playing together in another band, the group that would eventually help lead them towards Sobre Tormentas. They travelled to Mexico for a gig that none of them remembers fondly. Things hadn’t worked out as expected, and the experience stayed with them.
Returning seven years later with a different band and a show supporting one of their biggest influences brought some of that anxiety back.
“I remember the anxiety and the adrenaline. I don’t usually feel anxious before playing, I really enjoy it, and I generally try to channel that anxiety into energy, using it to convey all the emotions embedded in our songs. However, I felt I had unfinished business in Mexico.”
They got to the venue early, met Fiddlehead and watched the soundcheck. Things were going smoothly until people started arriving and a queue formed outside. The sight of that crowd made the whole situation suddenly seem much bigger. They were about to play in another country, opening for musicians whose records had meant a great deal to them.
Omega played first, and Steven remembers thinking there was no way Sobre Tormentas could follow such a good set. Just before going on, he spoke with Javier Meza, who told him to get the doubts out of his head and concentrate on playing.
“Right before we went on stage, I spoke with Javi. He told me to set aside my thoughts and focus entirely on what was about to happen. After all, every path we’d taken had led us to this very moment.”
They went out and gave it everything they had. Steven remembers finishing the set with an almost unreal sense of happiness. A few months later, the musicians came across a full recording of the Mexican show. Around the 26-minute mark, they discovered something none of them had noticed at the time: Fiddlehead had dedicated a song to Sobre Tormentas during their own set.
The following day, both bands were back in Costa Rica, sharing another bill at Amón Solar. Sobre Tormentas had never played two nights in a row before, and now they were opening for Fiddlehead again, this time alongside Camiches from Mexico and Salvadoran youth crew hardcore band Toma El Riesgo.
Steven remembers Alejandro, Fernando and Luis among the promoters who had helped put together the shows. Back home, he could see friends enjoying the gig and share the whole experience with people who had watched Sobre Tormentas grow from their earliest days. After the disappointment of 2019, Mexico finally felt like a place they could return to with good memories.
Other international bills have brought them together with Touché Amoré, Boston Manor, Cursi No Muere and Quiet Fear. Marck still finds it strange to think that they’ve opened for musicians they once only knew through records.
“Let’s start with the fact that, even in our wildest dreams, we never imagined we’d one day get to share a stage with any of those bands and seeing them all listed out is overwhelming and incredibly rewarding to be honest.”
There is another show already on the calendar. On 18 May 2027, Sobre Tormentas will open La Dispute’s first-ever concert in Costa Rica at Amón Solar, part of the American band’s Latin American tour. The musicians are also looking for ways to take their own EP to more cities in Central America and Mexico.
They’ll be doing that with a slightly different line-up from the one that recorded “Todo lo que me falta por gritar”. Javier Meza played guitar and Andrés Padilla handled drums on the EP, alongside Steven on vocals, Marck on bass and Luis on guitar. Chen Duarte and Alejandro Martínez have since taken over guitar and drum duties respectively.
Independent bands have to work around whatever else their members have going on. Jobs, families and other projects all take time, and sometimes the hours available for playing music simply change. Luis speaks warmly about the contributions Javier and Andrés made during their time together, especially the work they put into these five songs.
Chen was already an old friend, known to some members for more than ten years. Bringing him and Alejandro into the band has meant having different musical ideas in the room, as well as spending time with people they genuinely enjoy being around.
“For us, ST has always been an excuse to spend time together, make music, and do something we genuinely enjoy.”
They’ve now released two EPs and the singles that came between them. There are new things they want to try, and nobody is insisting that the next songs have to follow the same approach as the ones they’ve already recorded.
The people around the band have also helped them do things that streaming alone could never pay for. Sobre Tormentas wanted physical copies of the EP because the money coming in from digital platforms is so small, and some listeners would prefer to buy something they can actually hold.
Toño from Violence Records helped them make that happen. The relationship started with “Extingo la Calma”, when the label worked with them on a promotional CD alongside “Nunca Vuelvo”. They got along well and decided to keep working together on the new EP, releasing a limited CD edition and preparing a cassette version.
Violence Records usually works with punk and hardcore bands at the more aggressive end of those genres. Steven appreciates Toño’s willingness to work with their more melodic style, and the collaboration has since extended to Sobre Tormentas’ first T-shirt design.
The band’s artwork has developed through similar friendships. Marck and Steven took the photographs used for the EP cover, with Jerson Ruiz of Gork Stuff creating the final design and composition. Jerson has been working with them since their first designs in 2023. Mauricio of Bad Grip and Sthy have also contributed artwork for other band projects and merchandise.
For Steven, having people who understand what a small independent band needs has made the process considerably easier. He doesn’t regard manufacturing CDs and cassettes as especially difficult when you’ve got the right guidance, and he values the friendships that have come out of working with these people.
“Ultimately, that’s what this is all about: doing what we love alongside friends.”
“Todo lo que me falta por gritar” came out on 28 September 2026, with five songs running for 16 minutes and 54 seconds. You can hear the full EP on Bandcamp, where the band have also collected their earlier releases. The limited CD was made with Violence Records, a cassette is planned, and the video for “Contigo, los sueños” is available to watch.
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