The realization hits quietly between cigarette breaks and inside jokes: SOS can’t stop time.
The band gathers for their album shoot, arriving in staggered fashion dressed in local designer denim and tabis that look like they’ve lived their entire lives. Bassist Anjo Silvoza’s absence speaks louder than any feedback wail. He prioritized his day job, because even Katipunan’s perennial rockstars need to. “Can I hold Anjo like this?” rhythm guitarist Andrew Panopio quips, cradling a framed graduation photo of their missing member like a sacred relic. The moment captures everything about SOS in 2025: still devastatingly cool, just with adult battle scars.
For 17 years, SOS — which consists of bassist Anjo Silvoza, rhythm guitarist Andrew Panopio, frontman Roberto Seña, keyboardist Ram Alonzo, and drummer King Puentespina — have soundtracked the chaotic poetry of Filipino college youth. Their music has matured like the leather jackets they wore playing in the now-defunct Quezon City music venue Route 196 to crowds of young students who thought they’d never get old. That eternal quality pulses through It Was A Moment, their new album collecting pandemic-born songs, highway-written lyrics, and long-promised tracks finally seeing daylight. It’s less of a comeback, and more of a victory lap on their own terms. The sound of their band has survived name changes, major label churn, indie hustle, and the terrifying realization that making music might just be… a real job.
Seña and Puentespina trade John Malkovich impersonations as they climb the rafters on the rooftop floor, expressing an easygoing rhythm between bandmates who’ve spent nearly two decades finishing each other’s sentences and guitar riffs as naturally as they once tore through generational anthems like “Dying to Meet You.” That song — along with “Walrus” and “Amygdala” — became the holy trinity of early 2010s Pinoy garage rock, three-chord manifestos that turned college radio stations into mosh pits.
What’s remarkable isn’t that SOS are still here; it’s how little they’ve compromised the reckless sincerity that made them matter. From their self-titled EP in 2012 to the debut album, Whatever That Was, in 2017, their sound remains a delicious contradiction: polished enough for radio, but with frayed edges that might collapse into beautiful chaos at any moment. On It Was A Moment, that tension manifests as something wiser but no less vital. There are songs about acceptance and persistence, delivered with the same wide grin that made kids fall in love with them in the first place.
From hearing their songs in the middle of the action of a wrestling ring to clutching flights in international tours, SOS has a lot to say in terms of seizing the moment as a band. As the shoot wraps, there’s no grand pronouncement about legacy or longevity. Just five musicians (four present, one spiritually accounted for) who still find magic in the alchemy of cranked amps and shared cigarettes. The well isn’t running dry, it’s just deeper now.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Eight years ago, an interviewer asked you what songs you guys didn’t like to play live, and you said it was the first EP [She’s Only Sixteen]. When you think about your first release, is hating it a sign of growth for the band?
Seña: I don’t think I’d give the same answer now. Maybe when I said that, I was a little more hard on myself and how I saw our music. Now, I’ve learned to let go and enjoy it. I’m not exactly keen on playing those songs if we had to come up with a set list. If it’s a long show, maybe one of those songs will be in the setlist. Maybe not. But generally, I don’t feel that way anymore. Even with the first album, sometimes I don’t want to play those songs. It’s not because you [hate] your own songs. It’s more like I want to do something else.
You launched that album in Black Market, which isn’t around anymore. You guys celebrated your 10th anniversary in XX:XX, which is also gone. Fast forward to the pandemic, you guys played in the last Route 196 show, which is also defunct…
Seña: Last band to ever step foot in Route.
Panopio: It sounds like we’re killing these bars. [Laughs]
Seña: We are the cancer of this industry. Kill all venues. [Laughs]
I want to know how you guys feel about playing so frequently in venues that are now closed for good.
Seña: I think of it fondly, definitely. That’s pretty much my mid-twenties, which is ideally a fun part of your life. I wish there were more live venues because, compared to then and now, it’s either you go to a club, or you have a DIY venue and rent your own equipment.
Puentespina: We grew up there. Those places were the incubators.
Seña: I was talking to [someone] a few weeks ago, and I was describing what [the era of] 2016 and 2017 was like [for music] because it sounded so foreign to them… It’s either you play at small venues, you’re in the festival circuit, or you’re in the [Wish Bus] circuit. It’s weird. Not to say there’s no community in music, but it’s not as obvious as before.
What do you guys think about the magic of listening to an album from start to finish?
Seña: I have been doing that religiously again because I’ve been amassing a record collection, mostly for DJing. I missed it because we’re so spoiled with streaming, listening to something one by one. Now, I’ve been listening to albums again from start to finish. It’s great to let the artistry simmer because some songs, they’re good — and this isn’t the perfect phrase for it — but they don’t stand on their own. But when you listen to it in the context of an album, you start to like the song more.
Panopio: Nowadays, the game is really putting out singles because people don’t have the attention span, they say. But I always like to think that, five to ten years from now, you want to be a record that is cherished.
Seña: Evergreen.
Panopio: Evergreen… It’s so marketable.
We set our intentions per person. We pooled that together and just read everything we were going through or everything we wanted to write. [We were asked] three things to talk about per person, and the middle of [our] Venn diagram was about growing up.
With the addition of Ram in 2022, how has being a five-piece band changed your dynamic?
Seña: Someone [needs] tell us to stop.
Panopio: It’s nice just to get us out of our asses sometimes
Seña: In the studio, we’re working on the music na parang, tama na. OA na. [Laughs] I think it changed because, even before he joined, there were a lot of keyboard synth elements in the music. Now that [Ram] is here, it just ties everything up. It’s nice. It’s a new brain to pick because we have been bandmates for so long. It’s not always easy to get everyone to work together since we’re so used to each other. Not [that it’s a] lack of creativity, but the lack of discipline to focus, or to not add too much to a song.
Puentespina: Please.
Panopio: You’re killing the song. [Laughs]
Seña: Ram has been sessioning for us since college… We didn’t really plan to ask him [to join the band]. We were in Cebu for a festival, and he was there for another artist he was sessioning with. We’ve been friends for so long, and the music was just evolving…
Alonzo: We were at a rooftop in Cebu, and you were there to officially…
Seña: We proposed.
Alonzo: Yeah, they proposed.
You guys have been doing this for 17 years. In relation to It Was A Moment, is there a lingering feeling of acceptance, or growing old?
Puentespina: When we were doing the pre-prod for the album in the studio, we gave out paper.
Seña: Oh, I remember this.
Puentespina: We set our intentions per person. We pooled that together and just read everything we were going through or everything we wanted to write. [We were asked] three things to talk about per person, and the middle of [our] Venn diagram was about growing up.
Seña: Anxiety.
Alonzo: Change.
Seña: Sadness.
Puentespina: So it’s probably transitional.
Seña: [Whispers] “Am I enough?”
Puentespina: We were all turning 30, so it was like adulting-slash-coming-of-age, but coming of age-age.
Seña: Leaving of age na ‘ata ‘yon.
Panopio: The same way we can’t stop time. We can’t stop talking about it in our songs. It just comes out naturally that way.
I’ve heard you let a local wrestler use one of your tracks as their theme song. Could you elaborate more on that?
Seña: So, there’s this wrestler called Cali Nueva. He’s from [the promotion outfit] Filipino Pro Wrestling. His initial storyline was like a hipster-director thing… A creative director in a red beanie, trying to be the most annoying guy. That’s his initial character. Now, [in his current storyline] he’s kind of an underdog… He DM-ed us on Facebook. He was like, “Hey man, I really love this song [“Sweden”]. Can I make it my wrestling entrance theme?” And I’m like, “Fuck yeah.” “Do I have to pay you?” “No, man. Go!” Finally, someone checked off [something in] my bucket list. We’ve been talking about how we can implement that when it’s time for him to win a championship, or at least play the song live.
I just realized that we got a John Cena heel turn before the second SOS album.
Seña: Wrestling, I think, affects the way I see music. I’ll say that.
