“It was under my dad’s bed when I was a kid. When it slid out from underneath the bed… it was like the heavens were opening up”: How Zakk Wylde’s sparring partner Dario Lorina started a new chapter – with the help of a holy grail Les Paul

Dario Lorina often blazes licks on one of his many EMG-loaded Wylde Audio axes – from a brawny Warhammer to a devilishly pointy Goreghen offset he hoists while playing in Zakk Wylde’s iconic Southern-doom crew, Black Label Society.

Impressive though they all may be, when the Boston-raised, Vegas-based guitarist was recording the debut album from his new hard-rock force, Dark Chapel, Lorina relied on a family heirloom to get the job done: his father’s old Les Paul Standard.

“It was under my dad’s bed when I was a kid first learning how to play guitar,” he says of the ‘Holy Grail’ Gibson he’s still wowed by to this day, though he adds that his actual starter six-string was a Strat-shaped Samick.

It took some time before Lorina’s papa let him hold that Les Paul – let alone play it – but even eyeballing the thing was a major event back then. “When it slid out from underneath the bed… it was like the heavens were opening up.”

No doubt, Lorina’s built up a god-tier guitar game ever since. After getting his start as a 16-year-old prodigy in former Warrant singer Jani Lane’s backing band, Lorina spent time with veteran Sunset Strippers Lizzy Borden, ripped out a pair of killer instrumental solo albums and most famously joined Black Label Society in 2014 (eventually going toe-to-toe with Wylde on their 2021 record, Doom Crew Inc.)

All of those experiences come into play on Spirit in the Glass, Dark Chapel’s multi-barreled 10-song introduction. That’s where vocalist-guitarist Lorina and the rest of the outfit – guitarist Brody DeRozie, bassist Mike Gunn and drummer Luis Silva – deliver fuel-injected moto-metal fury (Afterglow), girthy down-South sludge-blues (All That Remains), Priest-leaning back-to-back solo sections (Hollow Smile) and varying layers of melodically righteous heaviness.

While Lorina puts on a refreshingly lightning-fingered clinic throughout Dark Chapel’s debut, it’s fair to say his rep as a top-tier player had already been long-established – after all, he shared a Guitar World cover with Wylde back in 2021. What may be most surprising about Spirit in the Glass is how the project also fully pushes his smokily soulful tenor vocal to the fore.

“With Black Label and other things I’ve been involved in, I’ve always sung backups. I didn’t have to rethink too much, thankfully,” Dark Chapel’s frontman says of co-existing mic-time with the spidery-fingered, wide-interval dramatics and blues-scorched shred passages of their dynamic first single, Glass Heart.

“I love how it goes into the verses, which [turns it into] a clean, pulled-back piece,” he says of that particular track, which conjures Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir by way of a slinking Bond theme sophistication.

He adds of evolving the tune’s tonal shimmer throughout the making of Spirit in the Glass: “When I was demoing this, I was using the Brigade chorus, [as a] Universal Audio plugin in ProTools, but when we recorded I did it with the Dunlop Rotovibe.”

Elsewhere, Corpse Flower affects a fragrant grunge-gloom aura through the use of hard-clanging requiem bells, EBow-droning texturalism and phase-shifting string ambiance inspired by prime Eddie.

Dark Chapel - Glass Heart [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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“In the beginning of it I’m doing the Van Halen, palm-on-the-strings thing. I think I used my flanger for that, maybe an MXR Phase 90. It’s just some layered effects going on in there that I recorded separately,” Lorina says of the intro’s percussively swooshing pedal accoutrement.

While Lorina’s tone is occasionally accentuated by interstellar effects, the guitarist notes that his streamlined, go-to setup for most of the Spirit in the Glass sessions was the Les Paul, a vintage JCM800 blasting through a Peavey 5150 4x12 and a classic canary-yellow Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive thrown up front.

“I like the setup to be as simple as possible… [an] overdrive pedal going into the front of the amp… that is the tone that I want to hear.”

Though the guitarist is still fully raging with Black Label Society – they’re prepping an album behind the scenes – Dark Chapel further expands Lorina’s overall musical vision by incorporating gently brooding acoustic sojourns (Dark Waters) and heart-stirring piano ballads (Dead Weight).

“I love sitting with the acoustic and writing stripped-down songs, one vocal and a guitar. Same thing with the piano,” he says. “I’m psyched about this record, because I feel like it’s all the types of music that I love.”

• Spirit in the Glass is out now via MNRK Heavy.