Viloria is a sonic entity operating under the mystique of transience, diaspora, with the purist legacy of Argentine rock as an inspiration.
Viloria was born out of the restless mind of Mario Viloria, a Venezuelan multi-instrumentalist whose sentimental education was forged between school choirs and the raw revelation of watching his cousin play a guitar at ten years old. His biggest influence: Nirvana.
The name Viloria was deliberately chosen to dodge genre tags. It exists solely to be “its own thing.”
The ghost of Luis Alberto Spinetta looms large here, serving as an ethical compass. Much like El Flaco, Mario treats the music and the author as an indivisible entity.
Early offerings, like the album Pez Que Fuma and tracks like “Si no estás” or “La Ciudad del Calor” create a sound of its own, much at large a successor to this Argentine rock tradition.
Viloria’s history doubles as cultural criticism. In 2019, while tracking “Algo que decir” in Chile, the project collided with a local scene paralyzed by what we diagnosed in our interview as a stultifying “national conservatism.”
In Santiago, original indie rock is forced underground, seeking refuge in living rooms because the public square remains obsessed with nostalgia acts and cover bands. Is it a lingering trauma of the dictatorship, or just late-stage globalization?
Whatever the diagnosis, Mario’s cure was constant movement. If Santiago was the laboratory, Buenos Aires was the crucible. The Argentine capital became the “supreme” backdrop where Viloria finalized an album that is a sentient map of the Venezuelan diaspora that birthed it, triangulating coordinates between Maracaibo, New York, and Buenos Aires (with the track “Chacarita” serving as a direct sonic landmark).
But traveling with a band as immigrants is no easy task.
Arriving in the United States marked the project’s final molecular shift: the transition from a solo endeavor with hired guns to a genuine creative democracy.
Mario crossed paths with Sofía at a percussion showcase, and later recruited Derek after witnessing him execute a flawless shuffle at Gramps.
The band consolidated when they started incorporating their own ideas to the band’s new album and the dynamic of “pay per gig” came to an end. It was a living thing!
It’s within this collective friction that the magic happens, like a bassline improvised by Sofía that completely hijacked and dictated the direction of a new track.
The past forged this moment: his first project Página or the mythical, unreleased records of Los Cassettes, have been left in the rearview. Backed by a welcoming community of expatriate musicians like Cuba’s Alejandro Terra, Viloria sounds like the sum of its travels: precise, self-taught, and fiercely independent.
On May 24th, Vloria dropped “Fachada”, the lead single from their upcoming record. The sound is crisp, fresh and perfect for a summer listen, mixing Spanish and Portuguese in their chorus.
They also recently played for a benefic cause in Orlando, raising funds for a local legend who got deported by ICE
It is in this day and date that I feel certain that this band is going to make waves of long lasting impact: the metamorphosis is complete and it’s now active to unfold its full range of musical effects, one track, riff, and show at a time.
This interview was conducted entirely in Spanish, with a lot of references to bands and places that created a bond without preamble. It was one of my newfound favorite bands of this year and I feel lucky and grateful for their time.
