Guttermouth: Ants Pants.

Guttermouth play the Vans Warped Tour at the Gold Coast Parklands on March 29.

A peculiar thing happened during this interview - the first 10 minutes just didn't record. For some reason the mini-disc pause button stuck and stayed stuck until Guttermouth vocalist and co-founder Mark 'Mercury' Adkins had finished talking about the Warped Tour.

Sorry, no quotes then. But for this nutty, noisy, quintet Warped was one of the ways into a bigger audience; and on this their 10th tour of Australia, since forming in 1989, they show little inclination to stop.

"I couldn't imagine getting back to a regular job. That would give me the shits. I just couldn't do it. I think I'd hang myself. No, I'm kidding. Actually, publicly off the Sydney Harbour Bridge."

Adkins laughs and says that he's been here so many times now he's even developed a taste for Vegemite.

"It's funny when we come down there now and go through customs, we know two of your customs agents. Pretty much by name. We give 'em tickets to our shows. We've given cops tickets to our shows down there."

You could misuse your position of favouritism and become smugglers.

"We could, but it's not worth the risk. What if their new favourite band becomes Van Halen or something. Then we're screwed."

That's unlikely. Besides Van Halen would be searched top to bottom and probably internally, as well. Laughter.

"When was the last time Van Halen came down there." A while ago. "With Sammy [Hagar]?" I think so. "Were you lucky enough to catch that performance?" (Chuckle.) Unfortunately, I was otherwise engaged; err, watching television, that night.

"Oh, that's happens to the best of them when Van Halen is in town."

I did see a performance by their former lead singer Mr Roth.

"Well, that's a big to-do there. He's quite an entertainer. He goes quite a way."

If you want to see crackpot on stage you go and see Ozzy Osbourne.

"I've never seen him." He's mad. "Isn't he just too old now."

Yep. But he's entertaining. Motley Crue though, they're just boring.

"I saw Motley Crue when they did their Generation Y comeback album. It was just fucking atrocious. They're used to playing stadiums filled with 50,000 people but metal had died so much in the US that they were playing this place that held 1,000 people and it was packed. But it was like a costume party where the guests had never left from 1980.”

"It was atrocious. All the girls had super fake boobs; sunburnt-looking, leather-skinned girls, still wearing the same leather pants - that they couldn't fit into properly, so they were jammed in them - and leopard skin jackets that they were 15 years ago, and still carrying the same purse. You just don't fare well in leather, either sex, when your hips are getting bigger. We were just harassing people, pouring drinks in girls' purses, things like that. We ended up leaving six songs in. The beautiful part of that show was the singer, Vince Neil, had put on a few pounds over the years as well, and he came on, swinging across the stage on a chandelier. That was his grand entrance. He was so fat and uncoordinated that he struggled to climb out of the thing. It was so sad. This was his welcome back and he just looked like a big, fat pig."

You have to have some respect for age when you enter your 40s and 50s. There are plenty of musicians that old who don't make fools of themselves.

"Exactly, you just don't need to squeeze into leather pants and swing on chandeliers. Guys like Keith Richards or Iggy [Pop] wear it well. You can see their age in their faces. I mean, how old does Keith look. They are seasoned rock stars. They didn't try and stay 16 forever."

Meanwhile, Guttermouth enter a second decade. That's frightening, as well.

"Thanks for ruining my day," Adkins mugs. "Thirteenth year, woo. Actually, nobody ever thought it was going to last that long. No way. And the funny thing is that the band is more popular than it has ever been. I'm dumbfounded by the whole thing, but I like it all the same. Actually the guys are in the studio working on the new album now while I sit around and talk on the phone."

Why do you hate the studio?

"Pardon."

The liner notes on your last album, Covered With Ants, include the sentences, ‘Mark hates the studio. Mark didn't do anything.’ Laughter.

"I wrote those notes. I don't mind writing songs but there is nothing worse to me than being locked in the studio, in a room with no windows, one door, that's really dimly lit. It just drives me crazy. I hate that environment. I'd rather be outside doing stuff than locked up in some little cave."