Fuerza Dread cuts through the dark with Obsidiana
Twenty years after forming in Puntarenas, the band played its third album in full for the first time, start to finish, in front of its people.
Some albums get presented and some get exorcised. Fuerza Dread’s night at El Mercadito La Cali, inside San José’s Mercado La California, was the second kind: the first time Obsidiana, their third studio album, was played live in full, and several of its songs were heard on stage for the first time.
The timing was no accident. The band was born on April 24, 2006 in Puntarenas and turns twenty in 2026. After Primer Aviso (2012) and En el Umbral (2016), Obsidiana arrives as a comeback record: eleven songs built on the idea that you have to go through the dark to find the light. The name says it all: obsidian is the stone born from fire, a metaphor for wounds, losses and breakups, and for who you can become after them.
Live, that journey turned into red light, backlighting and a stage that went from smoke to celebration. Reggae is still the root, but the album opens up to dub, hip-hop, R&B, rock, jazz and funk, with groove as the common thread. The three singles had already set the course: “Espejo Roto”, which broke some of the band’s formulas; “Átame”, a clearer return to reggae; and “Soltar lo que fuimos”, with the bass up front and lyrics about leaving a destructive relationship behind.
At the end, with the band and the crowd raising their hands under the Fuerza Dread logo, it was clear that Obsidiana isn’t just a new album: it’s how a twenty-year-old band decides to keep going.