Guttermouth
Covered With Ants

THE REVIEW

Irresistibly rude, unsinkable, small great musicians; in one word: Guttermouth. Certainly, you will never find them in an encyclopedia of the best years of punk, you will never find their albums on the shelves of Ricordi or music stores, and probably none of you will hear any covered version of What’s the Big Deal or She's got the Look by Green Day or Good Charlotte; but let's try, even if only for a few minutes, to bring to the surface the best album of the band, that is, one of the most immediate, fast, and effective albums that punk hadn’t seen since the days of Ramones and Dead Kennedys, and it's absolutely not an exaggerated statement.

Lush, creative, and carefree, (but not to be confused with the squalid emo and Blink 182 melodies), on the part of this quintet of underground clowns, who use their instruments to entertain their fans (and in this case, even the critics). Reaching the seventh chapter of their immense discography, our heroes decide to dedicate themselves to a hard and raw punk rock sound, but one that would suit the age of their audience (young and lazy punkers lacking a proper culture). They thus eliminate new school hardcore and post-hardcore standards (a detachment also due to the beefing up of the drums), which they had adopted in Musical Monkey (4 years gap), but without giving up the accelerations, which make their sound unmistakable. The tracks become more complex, undergoing time extensions, and they manage to set up a mini-orchestra consisting of banjo, violin, piano, which are prominently featured. Naturally, sound effects are present; an example is the talking that introduces more than one track, and the humorous and irreverent lyrics. The riff of That’s Life is something never heard before, the angriest song on the album, and after an equally incisive Secure Horizons, comes the exhilarating She's got the Look (a song derived from not very distant pop-punk mirages, and power echoes at Weezer played with speed and mastery; noteworthy is the standout bass work of James Nunn). In I'm destroying the World, the previously mentioned "orchestra" takes center stage: banjo and violin almost completely take over the song, which, in its short duration, flows like water from a tap; it is also the only track that stands out from the rest of the album because it is fully played in hardcore punk style. We continue with Chug-A-Lug night, with a vague Beatles-esque flavor, and What You Like About Me, which wouldn’t look out of place as a song by Velvet Revolver. The album closes with the somewhat unsuccessful experimental Cram it up Your Ass, with an infantile and vulgar text sung for a few seconds, as it is almost entirely instrumental in which the piano prevails.

Any good punk lover (in my opinion) should give it a listen. A band that managed to preclude themselves from the attention and friendship of Fat Mike (Nofx), but that deserved much, much more.