Dario Lorina - Dario Lorina

Dario Lorina
Dario Lorina
Shrapnel Records
2013
7
Dario Lorina, made a name from him at first touring with the late Warrant singer Jani Lane and in recent year as the steady guitarist in Lizzy Borden with whom he’s toured all over the world in recent years. On his first solo CD, for none other than Mike Varney’s, Shrapnel Records, the company that spearheaded the guitarist virtuoso revolution in the 80s, being responsible for discovering and delivering to the masses some of the biggest names of the genre, here he’s given a chance to unfurl his talents.
 
Dario’s album is not a stale piece of neo-classical shred exercises but attempts to go for a more riff oriented affair, that attempts to build complete musical pieces, that display the players unquestionable musical ability without losing their musicality. In that respect, he’s more Paul Gilbert than say Yngwie Malmsteen.
 
The production is not bad, overall, being clean, bright and crisp and with a balanced mix although the drum machine, which is not bad sounding, but is a little predictably programmed, sticks out a bit, in the not most gracious way. A bit more variation in the cymbals especially, might have made it a little less obvious.
 
I suppose all the pieces have their own charming ideas, but since this is Dario’s debut some, tend to be a bit overbearing, with his effort to show how good a guitarist he is. On the other hand on tracks like “My Heroine”, the idea alone caries the song. On the more mellow and laid back “Silhouettes”, he manages to convey a different atmosphere and those are tracks that would differentiate one’s compositional as well as playing abilities from the heap I suppose. While he seems that he still has some way until he becomes the absolute master of his own sound and his “metal” background is almost immediately becoming apparent, even if he tries to deviate from it, he’s probably on a good path.
 
“Feel’s Good” is another – bright sounding track and there’s a nice slight variation on the classic stapple, “The House of the Rising Sun”... where he manages to really, play for the song, even getting his tone and phrasing, in tune with the song. Thankfully the album is not one dimensional, as with songs like “Alive” for instance, some more melancholic moods are being visited, another relative highlight is the very “tender” and quite “fragile” “Words Unspoken”... which is followed by the not fragile or tender “Sacksong” (!?) that just goes for speedino-libidinous shred! “Revolutions”, revolves around a quite cool main idea, that it revisits aplenty with slight variations and is a nice rocker with some more mellow moments along the way and the album comes to a close with the rather interesting “Amor Odium” where Dario tries to possibly revisit every trick that he knows and that he’s utilized in the album, resulting in a bit of a “brain-salad” of a song... but it’s a rather tasty jam he’s using to make it all come together!
 
For guitar freaks it should be a rather interesting release, others might not really pay that much attention. It’s a welcome effort and I suppose there are some nice ideas translated into songs here. I am sure that the style will mature more with more forays into the instrumental genre, so the best is yet to come out of this young but quite promising musician.