Drunks With Guns began in 1984 in St. Louis, Missouri—three Crestwood derelicts and one North County ne’er-do-well converging over warm beer and broken gear in a dank Maplewood basement and stumbling upon a sound no one else was making. While their peers in the hardcore scene sprinted toward ever-faster tempos, the Drunks went the other direction: slow, crushing, hostile, rhythmic noise soaked in distortion and bad intent. Long before anyone used the term, they were helping to shape what would become sludge punk.
Between 1984 and 1987, the band self-released three 7-inch EPs—Drunks With Guns, Thirst for Knowledge, and Alter Human Industrial Fetishisms—and played exactly four live shows: a basement party and opening slots for 45 Grave, Samhain, and Battalion of Saints. A 1987 unauthorized “black album” bootleg LP, assembled behind the band’s back and looking (and sounding) like shit, appeared from out of nowhere, detonating the original lineup. The project collapsed, leaving Michael Doskocil as the sole owner of the songs and the name.
Decades later, with collectors driving prices into absurd territory, Doskocil made the obvious but necessary move: reclaim their demented genius and finally present it properly. The self-released Fucked Up on Beer & Drugs (2023) pulled the early recordings—including unreleased tracks—into one definitive remaster. Finally.
Then something unexpected surfaced: a raw, chaotic live recording from a forgotten gig in Austin, Texas, in September 2024. It was too good to ignore—a brutal snapshot of the band Doskocil had always heard in his head. Weasel Walter took the tape into his laboratory and worked on it like a mad scientist, cutting through the wreckage, preserving every scar, and reanimating the madness into a beautiful disaster fully worthy of the name. What emerged was undeniable. That became Drunks With Guns Live (2025), released in collaboration with St. Louis’s Trouble In River City (TIRC) Records.
Drunks With Guns has always been Michael Doskocil’s band. He wrote the songs, defined the sound, and carried the name forward when everyone else bailed. The material never got its due the first time around— four shows, a few rehearsals, and chaos posing as legacy. This lineup changes that. Mike Doskocil, Rick Eye, Weasel Walter, and John Zeps. This isn’t a recreation; they’re the first group to play these songs with the force, precision, and intent they always deserved. This is the real Drunks With Guns—not nostalgia, not mythmaking, just the songwriter and the right players finally delivering the material at full power.
At the end of the Austin set, Doskocil says it plainly:
“This IS the band. These ARE the songs.”
Nothing more needs to be said.
Buy the CD/download the album here:
https://tircrecords.bandcamp.com/album/live
