Guttermouth Lacks Aim in Its Invective

If you’re going to rely on shock value to make your statement, you’d better be effective at inciting people. At the Palace on Saturday, Guttermouth, the latest Orange County act to lunge into the punk spotlight, demonstrated its hard-core take on vulgarity a la the Sex Pistols. However, it quickly became clear that the band lacked the savvy to accurately aim its sneering attack at anything.

Frontman Mark Adkins appeared to take perverse pleasure in the flurries of spit the audience spewed at him and gleefully validated the band’s vehemently anti-PC reputation with disparaging comments about women, hippies and gays that were largely too inane to be offensive.

Introducing “God’s Kingdom,” he prattled on and on about Jesus Christ, as if flagrantly using the Lord’s name in vain was a novel approach to rabble-rousing. His bandmates gusted through the goofball tunes with relentless energy and precision--like countless other neo-punk outfits.

What Guttermouth fails to understand is that without a sense of purpose, invective is nothing more than puerile ranting that obscures the music accompanying it, no matter how proficient.