Corpus Christi Thrash: Devastation, Anialator and the Coast

Corpus Christi produced three thrash bands worth knowing, and all three formed in 1986. Devastation signed to Combat Records. Anialator went to a one-man California label and got heard in Japan and Germany anyway. Angkor Wat landed on a Metal Blade imprint, then left metal. All three ran on the same flyers, rooms and $5 door.

Who Were the Corpus Christi Thrash Bands?

Corpus Christi is a port city three and a half hours from Austin and six from Dallas. No record industry, no metal radio. What it had in 1986 was three sets of teenagers starting thrash bands at once.

They did not sound alike, and Alex Dominguez, who played in two of them, says they pushed each other and still came out different. He told Voices From The Dark Side his band “needed to write music just as brutal as these bands to keep up with them. Each of these bands, including us, all sounded different at the time.”

Dallas and Fort Worth dominate the Texas thrash story, and San Antonio gets credit as a metal city. The coast rarely comes up.

Devastation: Two Demos and a Combat Deal

Devastation formed in 1986 around vocalist Rodney Dunsmore, guitarist Dave Burk and bassist Alex Dominguez. Two demos followed that year, the five-song Destined to Death and the seven-song Violent Termination, per the archive at Metallipromo. A third, Contaminated, came in 1988.

The self-released album Violent Termination arrived in 1987, taking the demo’s name, and Combat Records picked the band up for Signs of Life (1989) and Idolatry (1991), per the BNR Metal Pages. They toured North America with Laaz Rockit, Sepultura, Dark Angel, Death, Demolition Hammer and Malevolent Creation, and never played off the continent.

Start with Idolatry. No Life ‘til Metal rates it among the heaviest thrash albums ever made, beside Possessed and Dark Angel, and flags something unusual for 1991: explicitly anti-Satanic lyrics. Signs of Life is the transitional record, thrash sliding into death metal, rare until Century Media reissued it in 1998.

The band stopped after the Idolatry tour in 1991. Dunsmore’s explanation to Blabbermouth is a money one: “you can’t hold down a job because you’re always on tour and you don’t make any money while you’re on tour.”

The 2008 reunion, driven by fans who never stopped asking, finally took them off the continent: Thrash Assault 3 in Germany, October 11, 2008. The guitar seat next to Henry Elizondo went to Walt Trachsler of Rotting Corpse, who had shared bills with the band since 1986 and whom Dunsmore calls its sixth member.

Anialator, Wild Rags and the Mail-Order Underground

Dominguez played bass in Devastation for about a year, left, and started Anialator around 1986. He had the name and its odd spelling before he had a band. The first lineup was Dominguez, guitarists Mark Olivo and David Cerda, drummer Alonzo Garcia and singer Marc Arispe, who has since died. Most were in high school.

“With ANIALATOR I wanted the music to be fast and also have some Hardcore and Heavy Metal elements mixed in.”

That is Dominguez to Voices From The Dark Side. A self-released demo came in 1987. He had spotted a Wild Rags Records ad in a zine, and told Extreminal what followed the tape: “a couple of months later he called me we talked and he was really into the music and offered us a deal.”

Wild Rags is the reason Anialator is remembered outside Texas. Ricardo “Richard C.” Campos founded it in 1986 in Montebello, California, and ran label, record shop and international mail-order distro at once, with a monthly zine reaching more than 30,000 subscribers, per Wikipedia. “Richard was the one who made ANIALATOR known worldwide,” Dominguez said. “I would get interviews just like this one in the mail from Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Spain etc.” It is the network in our piece on tape trading in the 1980s.

Wild Rags put out two Anialator EPs and a picture disc. Neither EP had a title, so fans named them after the sleeves: the white album (1988) and, for the vinyl it was pressed on, the red album.

He put the band on hiatus in 1990 and formed Sufferance. Then eBay prices, YouTube uploads and promoters on Facebook brought enough interest to restart Anialator in 2015, and Xtreem Music of Spain signed them in 2017. On October 22, 2024, the band released its first full-length album: Death Is Calling, seven tracks, mastered by Arthur Rizk.

Angkor Wat: Metal Blade, Then Skrew

Angkor Wat formed in 1986 too, built by Adam Grossman, Danny Lohner, Dave Brinkman and Mike Trevino. They played crossover: thrash with hardcore punk running through it. Wikipedia calls them forerunners of the Corpus Christi hardcore scene.

The live shows got them a deal with Death Records, a Metal Blade imprint. When Obscenity Becomes the Norm...Awake! came out in 1989, and Corpus Christi in 1990, cut at Firestation in San Marcos with Kerry Crafton and closing on a cover of Heart’s “Barracuda”.

By then the sound had moved. Grossman and Lohner relocated to Austin in 1990 and carried on as Skrew. A third album was already recorded under the Angkor Wat name, and Wikipedia has Lohner issuing it as Skrew’s debut instead, because it sat so far from the earlier work. Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame came out December 1, 1991 on Metal Blade. Lohner later worked with Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle and Marilyn Manson.

Angkor Wat came back in 2018. Per Riff Relevant, the reunion show was at House of Rock on June 1, their first in 28 years, the day before the band entered the South Texas Music Walk of Fame.

Where Did Corpus Christi Bands Actually Play?

One room keeps appearing on the flyers: all ages, five dollars, doors at seven.

Rotting Corpse drove down from the Metroplex repeatedly, billed on both flyers as being from Dallas: August 29, 1986 for an “End of Summer Slam Session” with Devastation and Angkor Wat, then Slam Session Part 2 the following April. The dates are on the shows page, the rooms on the venues page.

The Valley Run: Edinburg, McAllen and the Drive South

The scene did not stop at Corpus Christi. Devastation worked the Rio Grande Valley hard, and promoters there built bills around them.

Rotting Corpse drummer Dave Gryder remembers the Valley runs as the longest drives the band made, and the ones most likely to end with a flat tyre on a highway shoulder.

What Happened to the Coast Scene?

The same thing that happened everywhere. Devastation broke up in 1991, Angkor Wat had already become Skrew, Anialator went quiet in 1990. Thrash stopped selling. What survived was the audience: when Rotting Corpse reunited in 2005, the Memorial Day Massacre tour opened in Corpus Christi, not Dallas.

The records came back too: Century Media reissued Signs of Life and Idolatry in 1998, and Xtreem Music has kept Anialator in print since 2017. For the Metroplex half of the story, see the history and timeline pages.

Where to Hear It Live in Corpus Christi

Checked as of September 2026. The room Angkor Wat chose for its reunion is the one to watch.

As for the original bands: Anialator has no tour page, so dates surface on social media first; the Wild Rags material stays in print on the Mission of Death release page. Angkor Wat has played rarely since 2018 and Devastation has no announced dates. Rotting Corpse has nothing booked either; new shows go to Instagram first.

Sources

1. Metallipromo: Devastation archive
2. BNR Metal Pages: Devastation
3. No Life ‘til Metal: Devastation reviews
4. Blabbermouth: Devastation frontman on the reunion
5. Blabbermouth: Devastation’s tours and first overseas date
6. Voices From The Dark Side: Alex Dominguez interview
7. Extreminal: Alex Dominguez interview
8. Imperative PR: Anialator, Death Is Calling
9. Wikipedia: Wild Rags Records
10. Wikipedia: Angkor Wat (band)
11. Wikipedia: Corpus Christi (album)
12. Metal Blade: Skrew, Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame
13. Riff Relevant: Angkor Wat
14. House of Rock: about
15. House of Rock: events calendar

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