It was a Philly night at the Satellite, as Purling Hiss frontman, Mike Polizze, is from Philadelphia like the band War on Drugs he was opening for, but his non-stop guitar-shredding assault was quite surprising, recalling some big rock’ n’ roll classics without sounding outdated.
There were a lot of these guitar solos, tearing and shredding while Polizze was bending himself over the neck of his guitar, Angus Young style, and his vocals were completely buried in the fuzziness, distortion, and reverb of the heavy sound.
Loud? It was an understatement, Mike Polizze, Kiel Everett on bass, and Mike Sneeringer on drums were producing a thunderstorm, it was arena-hard-rock inside a small club and it was hard to believe this eardrum-bleeding sound was only coming from three people.
I am generally not fan of this overindulging style of the jamming solos, but this guy seemed to know what he was doing, he was constantly using the wah-wah guitar pedal to create this messy rawness, and with his curly long hair, he looked like someone escaped from a 80s hard rock band, capable of doing some real damage.
But comparing their powerful sound to hard rock would underestimate their sonic range, as there were elements of garage, punk, psychedelic power pop (like the last song they played), always filled up by monster-guitar twisters.
With tunes coming from two records, the 2010 ‘Public Service Announcement’ and the 2011 EP ‘Lounge Lizards', Polizze demonstrated he dared to venture into guitar hero territory, and he certainly could do a lot with his instrument.
But, toward the end of the set, the loudness suddenly eclipsed itself for a little while, and Purling Hiss played a few quieter ballads, as if they had gone from AC/DC to… Tom Petty.