Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!
Gusto!

Guttermouth Gusto
Epitaph

I honestly believe that people are waiting for Guttermouth to slip up. This is a band that has been around for so long and has been so consistent in what they do, I think people are just waiting for them to put out a CD that sounds too much like one of their other ones or to just kind of lose that special element they have.

Their second release on Epitaph (a switch many thought would hinder them), and their seventh in total (excluding their live CD), Guttermouth haven't really lost anything. If anything, they're just as crazy (if not crazier) than ever before.

As a long time Guttermouth fan, there are only three complaints I can make about this CD though they are not that major. For one thing, there are only fourteen songs. I like the Guttermouth CDs that have like, 30 songs that are all under two minutes. But these songs are all from two to three and a half minutes, so there are understandably less. And that's not to say they haven't done a CD with under 15 songs before because they have. I also don't think this CD has enough cursing, since they are, after all, Guttermouth. And it just kind of misses the whole "make fun of everything" concept where they could have probably written a song about how girls are trading in their NOFX hoodies for Jimmy Eat World pins and backpacks. Otherwise, it's all good.

The first song "Campfire Girl #61" starts with a kind of quiet intro that kicks right into the punk that has made Guttermouth notorious. It's the standard kind of song structure and all of that, only with slight variations so no song really sounds like any other they've done before and it has a fresh sound on a whole.

They actually have a title track, which is the first time they've done that since "Teri Yakimoto".

"Contagious" has sort of a rockish feel where you think that maybe they're mocking the new trend of bands like the Strokes, but any long time fan would know this is a style not unfamiliar to GM, with songs such as "No Such Thing" already under their belts for years.

Perhaps the funniest line comes from the song "Pee in the Shower" where Mark Adkins declares in a way that only he could, "I'd take you out to dinner but I can't find my pants".

"My Girlfriend" sends out shout outs to other bands such as Crass, the Offspring, NOFX, Pennywise and their label owner's band, Bad Religion. I'm not sure if this is a tribute to them so much as a way to make fun of them. I can never tell the difference, but can anyone?

Guttermouth always has that resident weird song too, and for "Gusto", it has to be "Lemon Water", in which Mark talks (literally talks over some music, not sings at times) about his experience at bars when people order only a glass of water with a slice of lemon. It has a great line though, "If I could be anyone in the world I'd be a magician. No, then I would hate myself more than I already do".

Fourteen new songs that do not let down. If you're waiting for Guttermouth to slip up and drop the punk rock ball, keep waiting.


Back to where from which you came