DARK CHAPEL

(Biography)

Dark Chapel, led by guitarist, vocalist, and producer Dario Lorina [Black Label Society], offset airtight guitar-craft and sludgy grooves with magnetic melodies, bluesy phrasing, and grunge mystique.

Striking an elusive balance between dark and heavy, ethereal and passionate, the band conjures their 2024 full-length debut LP, Spirit in The Glass [MNRK Heavy].

“This is a culmination of all artistic influence, whether musical or otherwise,” Dario notes. Growing up just south of Boston, Dario absorbed music from every angle at home. His father played drums, his mom took piano lessons, and his uncles excelled at guitar and bass. Among his most formative memories, he recalled fishing out tapes out of the glovebox of his dad’s truck, going on to enthusiastically load the deck with classics by Van Halen and Metallica. By the age of six, Dario commenced guitar lessons in earnest, jamming with pops in the basement on a regular basis as well. “The guitar never really left my hands,” he laughs. Years of woodshedding followed. At 16 years old, he answered the call to audition for Jani Lane and found himself on the road with the ex-Warrant frontman shortly thereafter.

Following a four-year stint in Lizzy Borden, he notably joined Black Label Society in 2014. Beyond logging thousands of miles on the road in the band, Dario shredded alongside Zakk Wylde on 2021’s Doom Crew Inc. and accompanied the Black Label Society mastermind and six-string legend on the cover of Guitar World. As part of the latter, Wylde succinctly summed up his reason for bringing the rising guitar-slinger aboard, "Because Dario’s awesome.” Along the way, he also unleashed two instrumental solo albums with Mike Varney/Shrapnel Records, namely Dario Lorina and Death Grip Tribulations. Throughout 2024, he carefully assembled what would become Dark Chapel’s Spirit in The Glass, rounding out the lineup with Brody DeRozie, Mike Gunn, and Luis Silva and writing and recording out of his Las Vegas HQ a.k.a. “The Dark Chapel.”

A steady drumbeat thumps and a loose riff roars on the first single, “Glass Heart.” Dario’s gritty delivery takes hold on a hypnotic hook, bleeding into a fret-burning lead punctuated by dramatic bends. “’Glass Heart’ is a lyrical and almost cinematic musical story that started with a riff and lyrically stemmed from emotion. That emotion created an imagery for me that I began writing about as if that feeling was a painting I was writing to describe,” he reveals.

On “Hollow Smile,” a thrash-y palm-muted chug seethes beneath his airy intonation on the verses. It climaxes on a chantable chorus accelerated by a driving rhythm. “I read a quote recently that portrays the meaning behind this song well: ‘A man’s own mind is the greatest battle he will face,’” he notes.

The wild riffing of “Corpse Flower” blooms through a head-nodding swing, and his vocals boom. “Lyrically, I was writing as if I was Edgar Allan Poe for a day, painting through words a landscape I was envisioning with the underlying current of an emotion based on life experience.”

Somber piano sets the tone for “Dead Weight.” He flaunts his range with a bold, blues-style lamentation, “The weight of this heartache that I carry will see me to my grave.” “Heavy and melancholy both musically and lyrically, ‘Dead Weight’ is a very meaningful song to me,” he continues.

Then, there’s “All That Remains.” Swaggering distortion tosses and turns as he churns out another scorching lead. “I wrote it about a friend of mine who passed away,” he says. “He was a singer, and the last line of the chorus is, ‘Your melody is all that remains.’”

The trip concludes with “Bullet In Our Chamber.” Illuminating another side of Dark Chapel, it teems with an unfiltered and unbridled emotion overflowing through the refrain. “It’s based on the idea of finding what you love and letting it kill you, like the Charles Bukowski quote.” In the end, Dark Chapel crush and captivate all at once.

###