The Dallas–Fort Worth metal scene of the 1980s was built in three rooms, none of them in Dallas. Rascals in Arlington opened to metal in May 1985. The Tombstone Factory in Fort Worth ran from spring 1986 to June 1989. Joe’s Garage, on Highway 80 in west Fort Worth, outlasted both and closed in 1994. Between them they produced Rigor Mortis, Gammacide, Pantera’s turn toward thrash, and the band whose site you’re reading.
The Short Version
- Jerry Warden of Warlock booked the first metal shows at Rascals in May 1985, then ran the Tombstone Factory from 1986 and Joe’s Garage from 1987.
- The Tombstone Factory was a sculptor’s old studio with no air conditioning and no working bathroom. Its cover charge was $3 to $5.
- By 1989 Joe’s Garage was, in Rick Perry’s words, “one of the top spots in the country for extreme metal.” Its legal capacity was about 150.
Why Did DFW Metal Grow on the West Side?
Dallas spent the mid-1980s building Deep Ellum around art and punk: Theatre Gallery (1984) and Club Dada (1986) launched new wave and art bands. Metal had no such neighborhood. The bands lived in Arlington and Fort Worth, where clubs booked only cover bands. Jerry Warden, who fronted Warlock from 1981, told the Dallas Observer that local rooms “wouldn’t ever let no fuckin’ metal band play anywhere.” His 1982 answer was a stage in a pasture called Heavy Meadows. Rigor Mortis singer Bruce Corbitt: “People from Dallas would drive a good hour just to get out there.”
Rascals: The First Metal Club in North Texas
Rascals was a small Arlington bar where Warden started booking metal in May 1985. Warlock was the house band, and Warden has called it the only metal club in North Texas at the time. In the Dallas Observer in 2013 he put it plainly:
“Rascals was the very first metal club in all the DFW metalplex. We opened this up in the spring of ‘85 and blew the whole damn thing up.”
It did not last. Fort Worth Weekly reported the shows got “too hairy” for the owners, and Rascals closed by February 1986. In nine months, Warlock recorded demos and, on December 6, 1985, a new Arlington band called Rotting Corpse played its debut there. The hand-drawn flyer is in the band’s archive.
Rascals Closed 1986
North Texas’s first metal club, for about nine months from May 1985. Warlock was the house band, and Rotting Corpse played its debut here. No published account we found gives the building’s address.
The flyer for Rotting Corpse’s first show, December 6, 1985. Flyer: Rotting Corpse archive
Warlock
Arlington, formed 1981 by Jerry Warden with his brother David, Casey Orr and Hardin Harrison. The band that seeded Rigor Mortis and Gammacide; its 1985 and 1986 demos are the place to start.
What Was the Tombstone Factory?
The building at 5701 Wrey Crest Road had been sculptor Charles Truett Williams’s studio. Tombstone blanks scattered on the property gave the metal room its name. Warden took it over in late summer 1986. It was cinder block, no air conditioning, no working bathroom, cover was $3 to $5, and the safe capacity of 100 was routinely ignored. It was also called the Radiation Dump, the name on most flyers.
Rigor Mortis celebrated their demo release there in October 1986. The room also hosted Pantera, Rotting Corpse, Warlock and Discharge. Warden to Fort Worth Weekly: “It was as wild as you can imagine. Nothin’ but sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.”
The Tombstone Factory Closed 1989
A sculptor’s old studio turned all-ages metal room, spring 1986 to June 1989. Rotting Corpse played here more than once; the site’s venues page has Steve Murphy’s story of the microphone that shocked him and the night Warlock’s pyro exploded outside the club. A 9,000-square-foot liquor store went up on the lot in 1995.
Discharge and Warlock at the Tombstone Factory. Flyer: Rotting Corpse archive
Warden left the room for six months in 1987, and it never recovered. The Tombstone’s last night came in June 1989. The cops came and talked to the landlord, who shut it down.
Joe’s Garage: The Club That Outlasted the Decade
Abboud Greig opened Joe’s Garage in 1984 on Highway 80 west of Loop 820. He told Warden “I hate that metal music,” but Warden started metal nights there in 1987 anyway. The room became home to Pantera, Rigor Mortis, Gammacide, Rotting Corpse and Solitude Aeturnus, and was among the first to book Sepultura, Tool and Slayer. Rick Perry: “Around ‘89, Joe’s Garage was one of the top spots in the country for extreme metal.”
“He didn’t like our music, but he was smart enough to see that we had a pretty big crowd. Joe’s became our home.”
Bruce Corbitt in the Observer. For Rotting Corpse it was home literally: Walt Trachsler ran sound there through 1989. Steve Murphy rates Sepultura’s Beneath the Remains tour as “the most brutal band I had ever seen live.”
Joe’s Garage Closed 1994
Open 1984 to 1994. The 1980s DFW metal room that ran as an actual licensed club, and the one that brought national thrash and death metal tours to Fort Worth. The sources give the highway but no street number, so the map points to the intersection.
Nuclear Assault and Morbid Scream at Joe’s Garage. Flyer: Rotting Corpse archive
The Bands Those Rooms Made
Warlock is the root. When Casey Orr and Hardin Harrison left in 1983, they formed Rigor Mortis with Mike Scaccia and Bruce Corbitt. They signed with Capitol in 1987, and the 1988 debut was “the first thrash band from Texas to get a record deal.” It is fast and horror-obsessed, the sound of the Tombstone Factory on tape.
Rigor Mortis
Dallas–Fort Worth, formed November 1983 out of Warlock’s rhythm section. Start with the 1988 Capitol debut. Guitarist Mike Scaccia died in 2012 and Bruce Corbitt in 2019.
Rick Perry left Warlock to play “faster, more aggressive stuff,” and formed Gammacide in Arlington in 1986. With Scott Shelby and others, they released Victims of Science in 1989, called the “Holy Grail” of underground thrash. Shelby later played the leads on Rotting Corpse’s 1990 demo.
Gammacide
Arlington, formed 1986. Start with Victims of Science (1989). Reunited for Hell’s Heroes in 2025 and has a new album, Toxic Mercenaries, out in 2026.
Pantera ran through all three rooms as the cover band that went heavy: Warden remembers them playing Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend,” and by 1988’s Power Metal they had turned toward thrash. Rotting Corpse’s Walt Trachsler was Darrell Abbott’s guitar tech in those years, which is on the timeline. And when John Perez left Rotting Corpse in spring 1987, he founded Solitude Aeturnus, the doom band that Joe’s Garage also housed.
Pantera
Arlington, formed as a glam cover band that shifted toward thrash in the late 1980s. Start with Power Metal (1988) to hear the turn toward heavier material.
Solitude Aeturnus
Fort Worth doom band founded by John Perez after he left Rotting Corpse in 1987. The project that defined the DFW doom sound of the era.
How the 1980s Scene Ended
The Tombstone Factory closed in June 1989. Warden’s KNON metal show, the first on the station, ran from 1986 to 1989. Corbitt’s verdict on what came next, in Fort Worth Weekly, is the standard one: “Grunge killed metal. When Nirvana got big, I thought metal was over.” Rigor Mortis broke up in 1991, Gammacide in 1992, and Rotting Corpse played its last show of the original run on Valentine’s Day 1990.
Joe’s Garage held on until 1994. Greig died on January 12, 2009, at 74, after being shot during a robbery, and the bands he had hosted played a three-night tribute at Rockstar Sports Bar that May, $5 at the door as it always had been. Corbitt: “As soon as Joe’s Garage was gone, we were lost there for a while.”
Where to Hear It Live
Confirmed dates as of September 2026, Texas first.
- October 24, 2026: Sick New World Texas, Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth. Slayer marks the 40th anniversary of Reign in Blood, per Blabbermouth, and Dallas’s Power Trip is on the bill, per JamBase. Tickets.
- March 18–20, 2027: Hell’s Heroes IX, White Oak Music Hall, Houston. The festival Gammacide reunited for in 2025. Lineup; tickets.
Gammacide’s Songkick calendar shows no Texas dates yet. Rotting Corpse has none announced as of this writing; new shows go up on Instagram first and then on the shows page. The Fort Worth room that books this kind of bill now is The Rail.
The Rail Open
West Fort Worth’s working metal room, off I-30. The calendar mixes metal with everything else, so check before you drive.
Photo: The Rail Club Live via Google
Start with “Rotting Corpse” (1986)
It is one of the three originals the band played at Rascals on its first night in December 1985, cut at Pantego Sound the following spring, so it is the sound of these rooms before anyone had a record deal.
Sources
- PAO Productions: Ghosts of DFW Music History: Tombstone Factory
- PAO Productions: Ghosts of DFW Music History: West Side Haunts
- Dallas Observer: The Metal Scene Remembers Abboud Greig, Joe’s Garage
- Dallas Observer: Dallas Metal Legend Warlock Is Releasing New Material
- Dallas Observer: Arlington Band Gammacide Brings Thrash Metal to Hell’s Heroes
- Dallas Observer: An Oral History of the Dallas Music Scene
- Fort Worth Weekly: Still Riveting
- Buddy Magazine: Metal Origin Stories from the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame in Arlington
- Voyage Dallas: Meet Jerry Warden
- Dallas Museum of Art: Deep Ellum
- Blabbermouth: Solitude Aeturnus Comments on Joe’s Garage Tribute Weekend
- BraveWords: Owner of Texas Club Where Pantera Got Their Break Shot Dead
- Wikipedia: Rigor Mortis (band)
- Songkick: Gammacide tour dates
- The Rail: Shows
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the first metal club in Dallas–Fort Worth?
Rascals, a small bar in south Arlington. Promoter Jerry Warden began booking metal there in May 1985 and has called it the only metal club in North Texas at the time. It was over by early 1986. Rotting Corpse played its first show there on December 6, 1985.
What was the Tombstone Factory in Fort Worth?
A cinder-block building at 5701 Wrey Crest Road, off Sun Valley Drive by Interstate 820, that had been sculptor Charles Truett Williams’s studio. It ran as an all-ages metal room from spring 1986 until June 1989, was also called the Radiation Dump, and hosted Rigor Mortis, Warlock, Pantera, Discharge, Devastation and Rotting Corpse.
Where was Joe’s Garage in Fort Worth?
On Highway 80 just west of Loop 820 in west Fort Worth. Abboud Greig opened it as a restaurant-turned-club in 1984, Jerry Warden started booking metal there in 1987, and it closed in 1994. Sepultura, Slayer, Exodus, Testament and Tool all played the room.
Why was the DFW metal scene in Arlington and Fort Worth rather than Dallas?
Dallas’s mid-1980s rooms, Theatre Gallery (1984) and Club Dada (1986) in Deep Ellum, were built around punk, new wave and art bands. The metal bands and their promoters lived on the west side, and the only owners willing to book them were there too. Bruce Corbitt of Rigor Mortis said people from Dallas would drive an hour to get to Joe’s Garage.
Which bands came out of the 1980s Dallas–Fort Worth metal scene?
Warlock, Rigor Mortis (signed to Capitol in 1987), Gammacide, Pantera, Rotting Corpse, Solitude Aeturnus, Hammer Witch, Talon and Morbid Scream. Rigor Mortis’s 1988 debut and Gammacide’s Victims of Science (1989) are the two records to start with.
