Guttermouth

Covered with Ants (Epitaph)
by Scott Hefflon

Funny, Guttermouth signed with the recently rich Dexter’s Nitro in ’94 or whatever cuz The Offspring was making mad cash and Epitaph didn’t want them. Guttermouth, that is. They were making bank off The Offspring. Story has it that The Offspring took Guttermouth on the road on “the big tour” and, as the bio states, fans “turned out to see radio-friendly Offspring and got Guttermouth shoving apple cores up their assholes.” Punk rock, baby!

Ya know, I’ve reviewed every Guttermouth album, each less “Jesus, what the fuck?!?” than the one before it, but I blame the band, not myself. (1994 was a cool-ass time. Vandals kicked ass with Live Fast Diahrea, NOFX’s Punk in Drublic set the new standard, and afterward, no one could match the, well, the “punkness” of those early efforts, especially now that the spotlight was on them. Everyone choked and it took ’em all years to recouperate the off-the-cuff mayhem, and even then, never as effortlessly as their accidental success, ya know?)

Truth is, I’ve run outta ways to describe Guttermouth’s fast’n’snotty punk antics, but that’s OK, cuz they’re basically repeating themselves by now anyway, so who the fuck cares? I’m a little disturbed by the hipster-vogue “That’s Life,” which can be seen as their “Pretty Fly for a White Guy,” like The Vandals did “Jackass” and NOFX did, well, I guess they have yet to grace us with a car/chip/soft-drink commercial of a song. “Can You Spare Some Ambition” is a goodie: Quick to the point of indecipherability, but it’s all standard Guttermouth formula, and that’s the highlight here. And the closing five minutes of “Cram It Up Your Ass” showing the myriad of ways to bang the song’s one melody line on the piano is, actually, kinda interesting, though tiresome, much like this bitchy little review.
(2798 Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026)