Let's get straight to the point. Guttermouth; you either love them or hate them. So if you fall into the latter category you can stop reading now because none of the BS below is going to change your mind. Though if you fall in the former category and get their humor, please read on.
On August 22, 2006 Guttermouth released their 10th album, Shave The Planet, the audio equivalent of a Mel Brooks movie. The follow up to 2004’s Eat Your Face, Guttermouth continue their return to their roots a la 90’s releases Musical Monkey and Teri Yakimoto. Shave The Planet continued to piss off the PC police recalling the glory days when LA punkers weren’t singing about heart-wrenching adolescent breakups, but cynically cracking on Oki Dogs, T.V. Parties and Group Sex. New songs like the title track, 'Shave The Planet' and 'Capitalizing From Plump Mistakes' are speckled with equal opportunity insults and ooze Mark Adkins skewed social commentary while others like Primate Camp, and My Chemical Imbalance are closer to a committed patient’s un-medicated delusional rants.
Around for the better part of a decade, Guttermouth have seen the rise and fall of many of their contemporaries, though if you ask Adkins his thoughts on the scene that Guttermouth got swept up in during the mid-90’s when “punk broke”, he would tell you, “Oh, don’t lump us in with all those watered down 90’s bands, we’re a product of the 80’s. That’s where we get our inspiration.” Classic releases like, Album Formerly Known as Full Length EP, Friendly People, Teri Yakimoto, Musical Monkey and Gorgeous reflect Adkins adolescent memories of punk rock when it was still about rebellion and held a bit of danger. “We used to sneak out at night to go to the Koo Koo’s Nest to see punk bands and come home at 4 in the morning completely wasted. It was a time when moms weren’t dropping their kids off at a club in their minivans and SUVs.”
Always one to put his money where his mouth is, Adkins has been rebelling against whatever rules or standards government, society or “the scene” have set, since the inception of the band. Not without ramifications though; Adkins was arrested in ’95 at Punk Show at the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion for assault with a deadly weapon (using the mic to incite the crowd into near riot), was banned from Canada for a period of a couple years after public indecency incident in Saskatoon, and in 2004 on the Vans Warped Tour he single handily provoked the entire tour to turn against him. In 2006 Guttermouth still continued to cross the line that shouldn’t be crossed and reminded all us jaded assholes why we fell in love with punk rock in first place.
