Eat Your Face

Album Review

In the hoity-toity high-concept 2000s, it's instantly refreshing to unfold the liners to Guttermouth's latest opus and find hastily Xeroxed shots of monkeys in space suits and dudes holding missiles. Happy to be idiotic, petty, and drunk in an era of promotional endorsements and politicized punk, Mark Adkins and crew immediately give fingers to furrowed brows with "Party of Two." "I'll never vote or even shave...Right on the floor I'll take a p**s/While you endure political bliss." It's a cocky tell-off to some of their suddenly serious peers, and a tightly wound Cali punk anthem, to boot. "Surfs Up A**hole" references Blue Crush while taking Huntington Beach wallet-chain wannabes to task, "The Next Faux Mohican" ridicules alternative rock and Hot Topic, and "Second DUI" is delivered in Johnny Rotten pidgin English. By now, it seems like Guttermouth are only offending to amuse themselves. But this is somehow honorable, especially when they're bitter veterans in a youth movement scene. It helps too that Eat Your Face has its share of solid songs. The pointedly brief "Season" rhymes "Bands line their pockets" with "You mosh and get jock itch"; "My Neighbor's Baby" is manic, mean, and explosive; and "Ticket to Quebec" is a stronger minute's worth of music than some young'uns might ever muster. Eat Your Face is Guttermouth's defiant wish for what things used to be like. From its artwork to its music, it revels in the buzz-saw simplicity and common-problem gripes that fueled the anthems of hardcore punk in '80s California. Eat Your Face presents a hard-headed platform. But it's a perfect one for fans who are as sick of the current state of affairs — in both the world and punk music — as Guttermouth obviously are.