Mauricio Masáre’s English tutors were James Hetfield, Chris Cornell and Jerry Cantrell. As a kid in the coffee-growing town of Pereira, Colombia, the budding artist saw music — specifically American metal and grunge — as a window to the globe. Today, the Metallica, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains singers that inspired him as a teen are also frequent subjects of his paintings, which layer lines — often in three-dimensional fashion — to form an image.
Visual art first brought Masáre to Charleston. He met Scott Parsons, owner of Revealed Gallery on Church Street, at an airport bar, leading to a show and then a move to the U.S. But his band, Erode the Dream, could be his next ticket to fly. On the group’s five-song debut, Neon Nightmares, which drops Jan. 11, Masáre delivers vocals that transition from a purr to a growl to a guttural bellow with power and ease, framing a dual guitar onslaught that sounds like a lost recording from early ’90s Seattle.
The group formed from jam sessions between bassist Robbie Weise, drummer Steven Wilson and guitarists Ryan Martin and Jon Stout (the latter another multidimensional artist known for his photography as BadJon).
“It’s fun to disconnect from one type of art and translate those ideas to a different medium,” said Stout of developing Erode the Dream. When photographer Steve Aycock sent Stout a video of Masáre singing, it was clear they had found their leader.
Masáre wrote the lyrics he sings on Neon Nightmares. The neon-pink vinyl’s back cover and insert also feature art by Masáre, complementing cover art by Fletcher Williams III that reflects the complicated beauty within the record’s grooves.
On “Becoming Ghosts,” a track with thundering kick drum rolls, Masáre bemoans the difficulty of maintaining a relationship with his girlfriend in Colombia: “The memories that we have are footprints in the sand/That unless we walk them again, those will fade, will be washed away.” The song also features vocals from singer Bekka Rice and production from Eric Ricket at Charleston’s Big Animal Studio, including overlaid voicemails that make the frustrated long-distance feelings immediately relatable.
Several tracks draw from Masáre’s experience as an immigrant. “Salt” references his first months in Charleston, trying to build a name as an artist and supporting himself by working at Lowes, a job he still holds. “It’s the tears of being in a new place and dealing with nostalgia and putting that emotion into a song to get your blood and heart pumping so you can just keep going,” Masáre explained.
On “Pink Rope,” a “dramatic, progressive rock, Nine Inch Nails kind of thing,” per Masáre, he relates an experience with a girlfriend via a simple prop the singer once used in a moment of passion. “That was a very hot thing,” he said, laughing. “Once a concept arrives in my brain, I try to stay in the zone and write everything around it in the moment.”
Masáre often writes in English, but he leans into his native tongue on “Vagabundo,” a song that compacts his melancholy and rebirth as he accepts that he’s “here for good” after a year in Charleston. “It’s a kind of religious thing, straight from the Bible and the story of Lazarus,” Masáre said.
Stout and his bandmates go back decades in the Charleston music scene, emerging from the hard-core scene at Summerville’s All Books & Company in the ’00s. By adding Masáre atop that history, Erode the Dream resuscitates Holy City hard rock. Neon Nightmares’ shakes the mellowing of families and careers, jolting a band of 30 and 40 somethings with fresh sonic aggression.
Erode the Dream releases Neon Nightmares with a release show at LoFi Brewing on Jan. 11. Acid Hawk and Infinite Freefall open the show.
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