Guttermouth

Eat Your Face (2004)

NotoriousGrayDavis

After a long-winded hangover of stylistic experimentation (the somewhat-slower yet poppier Covered with Ants and the pathetic, toned-down comedic album that is Gusto), I am pleased to say that Guttermouth returns to their goofier but somewhat-harder punk roots with Eat Your Face.

Even though Guttermouth plays little more than average Exploited-inspired punk, it is the band's quirky sense of humor and Mark Adkin's comical singing that sets the band apart from other punk-satire-party-crap-shit-bands. In terms of punk and satire, Guttermouth is more random and grosser than Blink 182, less musically talented than Tenacious D, less shock value than the Dwarves and yet more attuned to Weird Al Yankovic than Tenacious D.

Songs such as "My Neighbor's Baby," "Wasted Lives," "Octopus Hairpiece," and "Hot Dog to the Head" demonstrate a completely stupid, callow, depraved sense of humor. "Octopus Hairpiece" recounts a pathetic tale of losing your hairpiece at sea and one's didactic inner struggle with the throes of male-pattern baldness. "My Neighbor's Baby" contemplates Mark's disdain over a crying baby and a desire to suffocate it (or leave it in a dumpster). "Wasted Lives" has Mark slandering his fellow bandmates ("Ty and his sister are newlyweds," "Scott sits down when he has to pee") while shamelessly ripping off the Ramones' "Teenage Lobotomy."

That's not to say that Guttermouth doesn't show a serious side: "Ticket to Quebec," perhaps Guttermouth's fastest song yet, has Mark hurriedly screaming and mocking the excesses of American military might--and riffing a short Slayer-style solo in the middle. "Surf's Up Asshole" plays upon the subject of surf turfdom (aka the general frustration of outsiders descending upon Huntington Beach and crowding out the surf spots) with a saucy retort: "You all read it in some surf fagazine, so you all wind up in H.B." And finally "Party of Two" lightly comments upon the general inanity of the American two-party political system.

Whereas Guttermouth musically continues to stagnate, the band's sense of humor and satire is renewed again, to the days of "Musical Monkey" and "Friendly People." Their songs do not drone upon a singular theme (i.e. heartbreak about girls)--and they do not need to be entirely political to be stimulating.

Ultimately, Guttermouth exists to annoy people: to poke at mankind's pre-occupation with personal hygiene, to scourge the punk scene with inane, random bursts of cartoonish satire and to do everything they do comfortably (and inevitably, half-assed). Their music simply pulses to keep accurate time of it all.