S.A. Slayer: San Antonio’s Other Slayer, From Prepare to Die to Hell’s Heroes

S.A. Slayer is a San Antonio heavy metal band, formed as plain Slayer in 1981 by teenagers who loved the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Their Prepare to Die EP came out in 1983. After the Los Angeles Slayer took over the name, they added “S.A.” for San Antonio, and in 2025 they played live for the first time in four decades.

Who Were S.A. Slayer?

Bassist Don Van Stavern and drummer Dave McClain started the band in 1981, when McClain was 15, according to a 2024 Classic Rock feature by Dave Everley. They shortened the name from Dragonslayer, which is what the Los Angeles band had first called itself. A history in Texas State’s Journal of Texas Music History traces them to the teenagers who hung around Fun ’n Games/The Blue Room, a mini-golf course and venue.

Guitarists Robert “Bob Dog” Catlin and Art Villarreal completed the first lineup, with Chris Cronk singing. Steve Cooper soon replaced Cronk. The band’s own site says it formed in 1982 “out of mutual love for the NWOBHM bands.”

Cooper gave them their sound. McClain called him “the Rob Halford of San Antonio, because he sang super-high,” adding that at 22 or 23, “he seemed like a grandpa to us.” The city around them was the Heavy Metal Capital of the World.

Prepare to Die: The 1983 EP

After a battle of the bands showcase at the Eisenhauer Road Flea Market, the Journal says, the band was offered a contract with local label Rainforest Records. The Prepare to Die EP came out in 1983, credited to plain Slayer. The band cut six songs for it at B.O.S.S. Studios with producer-engineers Bob O’Neill and Rick Shrieves. The title track still opens their set.

That Classic Rock feature names Houston’s Helstar and Austin’s Watchtower as the band’s peers. Van Stavern says his band was bigger than both, and they were the first of the three to put out a record.

They shared stages. In our Helstar story, Larry Barragan remembers Helstar’s first real crowd was a San Antonio bill with S.A. Slayer. Hear the full EP on YouTube.

Why Is It Called S.A. Slayer?

The name came down to one night: November 30, 1984, at Villa Fontana in San Antonio. The Los Angeles Slayer was on its first American tour, and the San Antonio band opened. Two Texas bands, Syrus and Militia, played first, and Van Stavern remembers kids “literally hanging off the balcony.”

Catlin spent that afternoon with the headliners, as liaison for their in-store at Hastings Records in Windsor Park Mall, where he worked, he told the San Antonio Current in January 2026. Over vodka afterward, Catlin says, Kerry King checked his watch, said it was “about time to get down there and see this other” Slayer, then asked him, “What do you know about these guys anyhow?”

“You win, we lose. We broke up, you have the name.”

“I’m the guitar player,” Catlin answered, and when they said he was cool anyway, that was his reply. The Current adds that “many in attendance argue SA Slayer outperformed the out-of-towners.”

The legal story depends on who tells it. The band’s own news page says the S.A. came after the Los Angeles band “sent cease and desist.” Van Stavern disagrees: “There were all sorts of rumours and stories,” he told Classic Rock in 2024, “that we’d got a cease-and-desist letter, that this was a battle for the Slayer name. None of which was true.” Metal Blade founder Brian Slagel told Classic Rock by email that no letter was ever sent.

The Journal tells a third version: Metal Blade sent a cease-and-desist to the owner of B.O.S.S., and the band split in 1984. Promoter Marc Solis and Omni Productions reunited them for the night and billed it a “battle for the name.”

Go for the Throat: The Album That Waited Four Years

Villarreal left in 1983 to form Karion with Cronk. Wikipedia says his replacement was “local guitar prodigy Ron Jarzombek,” who made his recording debut on Go for the Throat.

The band went into the studio in early 1984 to cut it, with O’Neill and Shrieves producing again. Then it sat, and sources differ on why. Wikipedia says Rainforest closed its doors; Classic Rock says the label shelved the record once three of them started jamming with Riot’s Mark Reale.

Four years later, Los Angeles label Under den Linden Records bought the master tapes and released the LP in 1988 as S.A. Slayer. “We just said, put ‘S.A.’ in front of it so they know it’s not the other Slayer,” Van Stavern told Classic Rock. “But the original artwork just said ‘Slayer’.”

It’s the record to own. Voices from the Darkside heard “a dark, heavy style of Speed Metal with some minor touches of early Thrash,” led by Cooper’s “high pitched screams, falsetto included.” Start with “If You Want Evil” and “Hell Will Be Thy Name,” both still in the live set.

Skol Records paired both records on one CD, due out February 28, 2014, per Blabbermouth. High Roller Records pressed Prepare to Die on vinyl, limited to 500 copies.

By 1988 the band was long gone. It played one more show after Slayer vs. Slayer, then split. Wikipedia puts that final show at the Cameo with Nasty Savage.

The Cameo kept booking thrash. On July 18, 1986, the theater on East Commerce Street billed Rotting Corpse from Arlington with Death Tripper, Valkyrie and Hellpreacher as “The Texas Reign of Terror.” Steve Murphy says it’s the night people who were there still call the band’s best, as our venues page tells.

Where Did the Members of S.A. Slayer Go?

Three of them landed in Mark Reale’s Narita. In the mid-1980s, with Riot broken up after Born in America, Reale moved to San Antonio and recruited Cooper, Van Stavern and McClain, according to Wikipedia’s Riot V history. Narita cut one three-song demo, including an early version of “Thundersteel,” before Reale reformed Riot in 1986, per Wikipedia’s Narita entry. By 1986 Reale and Van Stavern were in Los Angeles trying to revive Riot; Reale later reunited with producer Steve Loeb and moved back to New York.

Narita’s best song survived. The title track of Riot’s Thundersteel, released by CBS/Epic on March 24, 1988, was first written by Reale and Van Stavern for Narita. Van Stavern, the only S.A. Slayer member to join Riot, played bass on the album and co-wrote much of it. Juggernaut’s Bobby Jarzombek, Ron’s brother, played most of the drums.

Van Stavern quit after the U.S. leg of the Privilege of Power tour in 1990 and was replaced by Pete Perez, formerly of Karion. He rejoined in 2008, when the Thundersteel lineup reformed, and still plays with Riot V.

McClain went furthest. He played with Sacred Reich from 1991 to 1995. He then drummed for Machine Head from 1995 to 2018, rejoined Sacred Reich in 2018 and parted ways with the band in October 2025, when Sacred Reich announced he was no longer a member, per Blabbermouth.

Jarzombek joined Austin’s Watchtower in the fall of 1986, as our Watchtower story tells. He later formed Spastic Ink and, with Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster, Blotted Science.

Catlin was in Juggernaut’s first lineup when Scott Womack and Harlan Glenn formed it in 1985, and Cooper later sang on its 1987 Metal Blade album Trouble Within. Cooper died on May 14, 2006, of kidney failure from complications of type 1 diabetes.

The 2025 Reunion: Hell’s Heroes and Keep It True

The band’s news page announced the reunion for Germany’s Keep It True XXV festival, with a Hell’s Heroes VII set in Houston a month earlier. Catlin, Van Stavern, McClain and Jarzombek returned, and Watchtower’s Jason McMaster, Cooper’s friend who shared his March 18 birthday, took the microphone. That lineup had worked together once before: in 2022 the five re-recorded a couple of old songs, still unreleased when Classic Rock reported it in 2024.

“If he could hear me, I would tell him that I would never let him down, and deliver his songs as strong and as loud as my soul will allow.”

That’s McMaster on Cooper, in the band’s reunion announcement. On March 22, 2025, they played the lawn at White Oak Music Hall during Hell’s Heroes VII, the same weekend as Gammacide’s reunion (listen). Per setlist.fm, the set opened with “Prepare to Die” and closed with “Go for the Throat.”

Keep It True XXV followed on April 25, 2025, at the Tauberfrankenhalle in Lauda-Königshofen. On April 25, 2026, the band released that set as Prepare to Die-Alive, 11 tracks mixed by Mike Heller and mastered by Lasse Lammert.

Where to Hear It Live

As of September 2026, S.A. Slayer has no shows posted, and we found no Texas dates for Riot V on Songkick. Watch the band’s Instagram. Rotting Corpse plays San Antonio next month, and the festival that brought S.A. Slayer back is on sale:

• October 24, 2026: Rotting Corpse at The Mix, 2423 N St Mary’s St, San Antonio. Show details
• March 18–20, 2027: Hell’s Heroes IX at White Oak Music Hall in Houston, with Overkill, Armored Saint and Metal Church. S.A. Slayer is not on the announced lineup. Tickets

Rotting Corpse shared a bill with Watchtower at The Rail in Fort Worth on September 20, 2025. The band’s upcoming Texas dates are on the shows page.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: S.A. Slayer
2. S.A. Slayer: News (reunion and live album announcements)
3. Classic Rock (Louder): Slayer vs Slayer, the story of 80s metal’s greatest battle of the bands
4. San Antonio Current: Viva Villa Fontana
5. Alamo True Metal: S.A. Slayer’s 40-year reunion at Hell’s Heroes VII
6. setlist.fm: S.A. Slayer
7. Blabbermouth: S.A. Slayer early recordings to be re-released (2014)
8. Wikipedia: List of Riot V band members
9. Wikipedia: Juggernaut (band)
10. Wikipedia: Narita (album), on the San Antonio band Narita
11. Journal of Texas Music History: The Heavy Metal Capital of the World (Jake Dromgoole)
12. Discogs: S.A. Slayer, Go for the Throat (Under den Linden, 1988)
13. Discogs: Slayer, Prepare to Die (Rainforest Records, 1983)
14. Voices from the Darkside: S.A. Slayer, Go for the Throat / Prepare to Die
15. Wikipedia: Riot V
16. Wikipedia: Thundersteel
17. Wikipedia: Dave McClain
18. Blabbermouth: Sacred Reich parts ways with drummer Dave McClain (2025)
19. Wikipedia: Ron Jarzombek
20. Cinema Treasures: Cameo Center
21. Texas A&M University–San Antonio: The History of the Cameo Theater
22. City Tribe Church: service times and location
23. Metal Centre: Hell’s Heroes IX 2027 lineup

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