Rating: 4.0 In Orange County, a small elite club of punk bands have circled their wagons, keeping all that are not worthy out of their cult. Rather...

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Rating: 4.0

In Orange County, a small elite club of punk bands have circled their wagons, keeping all that are not worthy out of their cult. Rather than form a gang or hold monthly meeting in some kind of Masonic get-together, they challenge each other with each new album they release, raising the bar on how offensive, tongue-in-cheek, or secret their lyrics can be. The founders of this club are The Vandals. The next in line for the throne is Guttermouth.
After 20 years (!) of offending parents and an entire country, Guttermouth is back at their old game, realizing the only people they need to entertain are themselves.

Case in point: their last album Gusto was so much of an inside joke they only put one or two punk songs on it. Fans were pissed, the label likely lost bucks, and the album left people scratching their heads with a closing spoken-word track.

Thank your lucky stars that Eat Your Face, a co-branded release from Epitaph and Volcom, takes the band to their sturdy and offensive roots. Reaching to all kinds with a verbal smack, vocalist Mark Adkins will immediately remind you of that kid back in elementary school who always got in trouble with the teacher, while at the same time, making the entire class laugh at his shenanigans. In 2004, Adkins sounds like a man ready to collect on years of entertaining the masses by endangering himself and his bandmates.

"Surfs Up Asshole" pokes fun at migrant surfers as if they're some colorful version of Hot Topic kids. "The Next Faux-Mohican" proves many theories that all flash-in-the-pan bands are exactly that, and even today's batch of emo bands on MTV will be gone in about 3 years. (Thank God!) "Second DUI" is Adkins' ode to now ex-drummer Ty Smith's run-ins with the law, going as far as including audio from phone messages left on Adkins' machine as Smith was stranded at a bus stop. Refusing to take part in election year politics, Guttermouth ups the ante by proclaiming their love of guns and partying on "NRAA." And the epic closer of "Hot Dog To The Head" is exactly about what you're already thinking.

After being kicked off of this year's Warped Tour for allegedly pissing off the make-up wearing bands, it's obviously high time Guttermouth be given another chance to call out the fakes and give them a much-needed dose of snot-nose punk rock.

RIYL:
The Vandals
Pennywise
Manic Hispanic

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In some circles you can't drink beer. In other circles, it's a bad idea to wear leather. Other places, you'd better not drop a word like "faggot" or "cunt."...

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In some circles you can't drink beer. In other circles, it's a bad idea to wear leather. Other places, you'd better not drop a word like "faggot" or "cunt." When did punk rock become so regimented?

Guttermouth returns from its acousta-country-punkish direction to true-blue punk rock -- the kind that will piss off parents, overly sensitive scenesters and most authority figures worth their position -- on Eat Your Face. Punk rock's serious side's rarely been as overlooked, and it couldn't feel better. Go get drunk, fall down, make fun of the handicapped, poor, ugly, snobby and the easily sensitive and set it to snotty So-Cal punk rock, and you've got Eat Your Face. Except, of course, your version probably wouldn't be nearly as catchy, humorous or downright irresistible as Guttermouth's stab at it is.

The veteran punks aren't screwing around on their tenth full-length. In fact, they're not about to kowtow to anybody on this record. Sounding like vintage Guttermouth (read: young, loud, snotty and without a trace of shame), Eat Your Face recalls the band's days as mid-90s yuksters on albums like Gorgeous and Friendly People.

There are no surprises on this record. Singer Mark Adkins lets his snotty vocals straddle the line between nasal bickering and singing, while the band unloads a pile of songs that sound as if they could have been pulled straight out of the early-'80s Los Angeles scene, with wiry guitars and straight-ahead tempos that forgo skatepunk, metal-core and a million other clichés. Adkins levels his witticism at a load of targets -- none of them obvious -- with irony, cynicism and a poison tongue. "Surf's Up Asshole," rags on trendy surfer wannabes, "My Neighbor's Baby" condemns an infant for ear-piercing, sleep-disrupting screams and "Party of Two" rails on suddenly politically conscious punks who, a year ago, were talking skateboard and halfpipes instead of electoral politics. Of course, the suspected odes to booze show up in "NRAAA" and "Second DUI."

"Punk" and "comedy" are rarely used correctly in conjunction with each other, but Eat Your Face proves the lost art of the punk-rock smartass hasn't died. Don't let the one-liners and sarcasm fool you, however, as Adkins and company are as testy and pissed off as any of their more aggressive brethren, a fact that makes the band's latest a glorious return to wisecracking punk rock.

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