Guttermouth must have gotten sick of being referred to as a poor man's joke-core
NOFX, because
Gusto sees the tenured punks delving into numerous styles, but with mixed results; the title track and especially "Contagious" borrow from the
Social Distortion school of cow-punk, "Pee in the Shower" could be a silly, snotty
blink-182 B-side, and "My Town," with cheesy
Devo-like synths and an arrhythmic beat leading the way, sounds like quirky, surfy
B-52's with wailing female vocals provided by
Tsunami Bomb's
Agent M augmenting
Mark Adkins' idiosyncratic vocals that assume the role of
Fred Schneider. Even the Irish jig-mosh of
Flogging Molly gets reworked on "Looking Out for #1." While adventurous escapes to new musical styles are usually appreciated, on
Gusto the band's sophomoric humor and the cheeky way it performs the material makes quite obvious that the band is taking the piss out of everything instead of embracing something -- anything -- and meaning it, not unlike the throwaway tracks on many a
Sugar Ray disc. But even
Mark McGrath couldn't pull off the horrible and not particularly clever double-entendre of "Foot Long" or the faux lounge scat on "Twins." Even he knows when to quit.
Gusto sees a band that was either bereft of ideas, so its members opted to put out a bunch of novelty tracks in the place of anything substantial, or really thought that the disc was a good idea, and it's unsure what's worse. ~ Brian O'Neill