Man, were me and my record geek friends excited when all that DRUNKS WITH GUNS vinyl started pouring forth in the mid/late 80s. Exceptionally rare, exceptionally raw noise of a sort I’d never heard before, totally rooted in FLIPPER-fied sludge but taking the evilness and gutter-scraping depravity to a new low. It sounds pretty wack in this day & age, doesn’t it? Years ago I tentatively rendered a posthumous Juke Box Jury verdict on these guys as INNOCENT, with this commentary:“Could be a real easy one for most to dismiss without actually listening to their late 80s output, as their shtick revolved around way-“heavy” topics like blood, guns, deviant sexual behavior etc. All well and good when you’re in the naïve, blossoming flower of youth, but it doesn’t wear so well on a 35-year-old. But St. Louis’ Drunks With Guns, who barely released anything back in the day that you could actually find without resorting to extreme ninja record collecting tactics, mitigated all of their youthful stupidity with the most flattening, bottom-heavy creepy crawl THUD that moved well beyond the benchmark set by FLIPPER into new realms of heavy ugliness. I listened the other day to some of their achievements, and tracks like “Drunks Theme” “Hellhouse” and, uh, “Dick In One Hand” still have it. They also were blessed with a terrific vocalist (Mike Doskocil) who “sang” with an affected miserable, angry white trash drunkard’s voice, and actually pulled it off. Many lesser lights have tried, and for all their raw, chapped vocal cords and belligerent posturing, their bands’ records are sitting in the 99-cent bins today (Iowa Beef Experience or god forbid, TAD, anyone?). Meanwhile, Drunks With Guns vinyl changes hands for $50+ for each of those impossibly rare 45s. JUKE BOX JURY VERDICT? Never mind the rarity – for their bloodthirsty music alone, I call DWG INNOCENT.”
A few years so, and I’m actually going with the 1987 “Alter Human Industrial Fetishisms” (whatever that means) 7”EP as their high-water mark. 500 copies on Dental Records. This was the last record with guitarist Stan Seitrich, who went on to form the tasteful and refined Strangulated Beatoffs (who were a lesser version of DWG by far). If pressed before a jury of my peers, I’d admit that this stuff is all pretty silly at the end of the day – but ah, the memories of more simple, less judgmental times. Here are all three songs for ya.
Play or Download DRUNKS WITH GUNS – “Zombie”
Play or Download DRUNKS WITH GUNS – “Leprosy”
Play or Download DRUNKS WITH GUNS – “Enemy”
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3 comments:
do you knnow anything about who the singer after this stuff was? i, too, love mike doskocil's vocals and have downloaded all of their shit, but i scored the 1990 7" with Zombie, Fingerpuppet, WW IX, & Shredded Meat- which is a different sound for having what sound like a 7 yr old girl singer. what the fuck?
All I know is that it was a little girl named "Melissa", and that DWG were a shell of their former selves. Those records were terrible!
I liked the "Melissa" stuff. It was a huge fuck you to Mike Doskocil, whom had also started a mediocre version of DWG at the same time. If you think the Melissa stuff is bad, don't even bother with "Headgiver" and the other 7 inch with Doskocil's DWG. Weak shit. At least the Melissa version still had RIFFS.
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