While Zakk Wylde has busied himself with Pantera and his gear firm, Wylde Audio, in recent years, his Black Label Society co-guitarist Dario Lorina has been putting together a new project, Dark Chapel. Their first LP, Spirit in the Glass, released last month, and his father’s vintage Les Paul lies at its heart.
It’s perhaps a surprising admission considering he’s played his bandleader’s EMG-loaded axes in Black Label Society, and again in Dark Chapel music videos, including a Blood River Burl Goregehn for "Glass Heart."
This electric guitar, though, is special, and setting eyes on it for the first time was a life-changing moment, he says.
“When it slid out from underneath the bed, it was like the heavens were opening up,” he tells Guitar World.
“It was under my dad’s bed when I was a kid first learning how to play guitar,” he explains. Teasingly, it would be years before he was allowed to touch it, cutting his teeth instead on a Samick Strat copy.
There are some psychedelic soundscapes across Dark Chapel's debut, with a Dunlop Rotovibe, Eddie Van Halen's favorite phaser, an MXR Phase 90, and an EBow all featuring at different points. But for the guitar and amp setup, he's kept things simple. A little old school, even.
Spirit in the Glass is dominated by the sounds of that near-mythical Les Paul, pushed by a yellow Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive, going through a vintage Marshall JCM800 tube amp and a Peavey 5150 4x12 cab.
“I like the setup to be as simple as possible, he details. An overdrive pedal going into the front of the amp, that is the tone that I want to hear.”
![Dark Chapel - Glass Heart [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ksQaN83tzR0/maxresdefault.jpg)
Powered by that trio of classic metal guitar counterparts, the record takes in grunge, sludgy blues, and powerdriving metal that he’ll hope will help him establish himself away from the sizable shadow of his BLS bandmate.
Wylde, meanwhile, has revealed the strange rules Ozzy Osbourne had when it came to gear, with certain pedals and even pickup positions strictly off the table.
He’s also detailed how the work of Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee informed and inspired the first riff he wrote for the Prince of Darkness and has responded to those confused by his oddball picking technique.
The Viking-sized riffer is set for a double shift at Black Sabbath’s final show, with Pantera and an Ozzy solo set featured across the star-studded line-up.
Tom Morello has been tasked with putting the day together, and he’s aiming for it to go down in heavy metal folklore.
“It’s historic on a lot of levels for someone who is a big fan of the Ozzy records,” he tells Guitar Player. “We’re celebrating Black Sabbath, but it’s Ozzy Osbourne’s final show, too. It is, in some ways, also a tribute to the great Randy Rhoads, who was on a poster on my wall when I was practicing eight hours a day.
