Warlock: The Arlington Band That Started North Texas Metal

Warlock was the first all-metal band in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, formed in Arlington in 1981 by singer Jerry Warden. In five years the band built an outdoor stage in a pasture, became the house band at the first metal club in North Texas and sent its members on to Rigor Mortis and Gammacide. If you want to know where Dallas metal in the 1980s came from, start here.

Who Started Heavy Metal in Dallas and Arlington?

Jerry Warden grew up in Arlington in the 1970s on Blue Öyster Cult, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper, then AC/DC and Judas Priest. His first band was Megaton, an Iron Maiden covers group that replaced him with another singer. In 1981 he formed Warlock with his brother David Warden on guitar, Casey Orr on bass and Harden Harrison on drums, according to Christian McPhate’s 2013 Dallas Observer feature.

The band’s own biography calls it “the first all metal band to hail from the D/FW Metalplex,” and the claim holds up: Pantera was still a covers act in 1981, and Rigor Mortis, Rotting Corpse and Gammacide did not exist yet. The Observer described the sound as “one part Judas Priest and another AC/DC.”

Local clubs would not book metal, so the bands learned covers. Rick Perry, who joined on second guitar a few years later, told Extreminal that the early sets were Motörhead, Venom, Saxon, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.

Heavy Meadows: A Stage in a Pasture

With no clubs to play, Warden built his own. In 1982 he put a stage in the middle of a pasture in Arlington and called it Heavy Meadows. The Observer’s 2014 follow-up describes it as a mini-Woodstock of local metal, with Eruption, BossTweed and Pantera playing on an old flatbed trailer. Warden’s 2018 Voyage Dallas interview dates the series to 1982 and 1983.

Heavy Meadows is where Warden became a promoter as well as a singer. He drew the flyers by hand, and he was still pulling them out of storage to show reporters thirty years later.

The Split That Created Rigor Mortis

In the fall of 1983 Casey Orr and Harden Harrison left Warlock after a falling-out with the Warden brothers. The two schoolmates met guitarist Mike Scaccia and formed Rigor Mortis in November 1983, with Bruce Corbitt joining on vocals. Warden put it plainly to Buddy Magazine in January 2026: “You know, they were in my band before they had Rigor Mortis.”

Rigor Mortis was the band that eventually got the record deal: Capitol signed them in 1987, and the self-titled album came out on July 19, 1988. Corbitt, who died in 2012, remembered Warlock as a band from just before the wave broke.

“Honestly, the only times I saw Warlock was when they did a couple of shows with Rigor Mortis, but they were gone when the local underground scene really exploded with a thrash wave of Rigor, Gammicide, Rotting Corpse, Hammer Witch, Talon, Morbid Scream, etc.”

That is Corbitt in the 2013 Observer piece, and it is the fairest summary of Warlock’s place in the story.

Rascals: The First Metal Club in North Texas

Warlock’s replacement lineup settled in 1984 and 1985: Warden on vocals, Rick Perry on guitar, Eric Roy on bass and Les Choate on drums. Perry says he joined in 1984 because Warlock was one of the very few metal bands in Dallas–Fort Worth, and in two years the band opened for Celtic Frost, Voivod, Metal Church, Watchtower and the Mentors. PAO Productions’ history of the west-side venues puts one of those bills at Machinist Hall, 1930 Hinton Drive, in January 1986: Metal Church, Omen and Warlock opening.

The bigger move came in the spring of 1985, when Warden started booking metal at Rascals, a bar in south Arlington owned by Johnny and Jimmy Cornuaud. Warlock was the house band. “Rascals was the very first metal club in all the DFW metalplex,” Warden told the Observer. “We opened this up in the spring of ‘85 and blew the whole damn thing up.”

This is where Warlock’s story and Rotting Corpse’s meet. Rotting Corpse played its first show at Rascals on Friday, December 6, 1985, mostly covers plus the three songs that became the first demo. Rascals stopped booking metal in February 1986; the club has its own article.

The 1985 and 1986 Demos

The Rascals money paid for the recordings. “We made a bunch of money at Rascals, went to the recording studio, and made these demos, and then we just played them for people we knew and in our car,” Perry told the Observer. The band’s biography says the 1985 session was at Pantego Sound, Jerry Abbott’s studio where Pantera cut its early albums, and the 1986 session was at Planet Dallas. Rotting Corpse recorded its own first demo at Pantego in the spring of 1986.

Perry describes the first demo as straightforward heavy metal and the second as “more thrash and speed metal.” The songs people remember are “Gutter Rats,” “End of the Line,” “Iron Jaw,” “Walking Plague,” “S.O.T.R.” and “Name Your Poison.” Warden’s own ReverbNation page still streams five of them.

Only one track ever got a proper release. “End of the Line” appears on Texas Metal Archives Volume One, the 2009 Brainticket Records compilation of 1980s Texas demo tracks alongside Sentinel, Necrovore and Wicked Angel. Brainticket is the label run by John Perez, Rotting Corpse’s founding guitarist, who started it during a Solitude Aeturnus hiatus in the mid-1990s.

In 1985 Warlock also won a local cable channel’s battle of the bands. The prize was a professionally shot music video, and the shoot fell apart when Warden and Perry could not agree on which song to film.

The Tombstone Factory and the September 1986 Breakup

When Rascals ended, Warden moved the scene to Fort Worth. PAO Productions’ history of the Tombstone Factory says Jimi Moody and his bandmates opened the room at 5701 Wrey Crest Road in the spring of 1986, in a sculptor’s former studio where they found actual tombstones lying around, and that Warden took it over in late summer 1986. It ran until June 1989. The bands PAO lists include Warlock, Rigor Mortis, Pantera, Discharge, Devastation, Talon and Rotting Corpse.

The Rotting Corpse archive has two Warlock flyers from the room. One bills Rotting Corpse with Warlock and Valkyrie at the Radiation Dump, the club’s other name, on a Saturday, June 14. The other puts Discharge and Warlock on a Tuesday, September 2. The venues page also records the night Warlock brought pyro: a roadie packed gunpowder into a coffee can, the can went off outside, and Steve Murphy watched the whole crowd run out of the club.

Warlock did not survive the year. In September 1986 Perry quit over the band’s direction: he wanted heavier, faster material, and Warden wanted to stay closer to the early sound. Eric Roy left with him. Warden has never sugar-coated what it cost. “We were leading the pack, and we just handed it to Rigor Mortis,” he told the Observer.

Gammacide, KNON and the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame

Perry and Roy had a new band within a week or two: Gammacide, with drummer Jamey Milford and, from late 1986 or early 1987, singer Varnam Ponville. Perry had written the Warlock songs, so “Gutter Rats” and “Walking Plague” stayed in the set. Gammacide’s 1990 album Victims of Science on Wild Rags is the record to hear, and the band released Toxic Mercenaries, its first album in more than 35 years, on NoLifeTilMetal on September 11, 2026, per Blabbermouth.

Warden kept building the scene from the other side of the stage. He joined KNON 89.3 FM and started its first metal show, formed a band called Warden in 1987 that later became CrimeScene, and by his own account brought metal to Joe’s Garage in Fort Worth the same year. Eric Roy died in 2001. Rotting Corpse and Gammacide shared a Joe’s Garage bill billed as “Give thanks for thrash”; the flyer is in the gallery.

Warden’s long-running project is the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame. As of Buddy Magazine’s January 2026 profile the museum operates at 120 East Abram Street in downtown Arlington, collects guitars, flyers and memorabilia, and is working toward nonprofit status. Buddy notes that Rotting Corpse has supported it with performances.

Warlock Texas: The 2014 Reunion

Perry made the first call. People buying Gammacide’s reissue CD kept asking him about Warlock, and around 2011 he and Warden reconnected. They renamed the band Warlock Texas to keep it separate from Doro Pesch’s German Warlock, and filled out the lineup with two players from the bands that had followed them: Randy “Gribb” Cook of Rotting Corpse on drums and Clay McCarty of Toxic on bass.

They rehearsed in Cook’s garage for two years. The reunion show was August 2, 2014, at Diamond Jim’s Saloon in Arlington, in front of more than 200 people. “We had to play Arlington first since it’s our home town, man,” Warden said. Two new songs, “Rubber Bullets” and “Devil Dance,” went into the set beside “S.O.T.R.” and “Iron Jaw.” A New Year’s Eve show at the Boiler Room in Dallas followed, then the band went quiet again in early 2015.

Perry has since said he will not do it a third time. Metal Archives lists Warlock Texas as active since 2021 with Warden fronting a new lineup of Jon Cammack, Bob Hargrove and Josh Johnson. The demos, 40 years on, have still not had the proper reissue both men once promised.

Where to Hear It Live

As of September 2026, Warlock Texas has no announced dates we could find. The band’s Facebook page is where Warden posts shows, and the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame’s downtown Arlington listing is the place to check for events at the museum.

The closest thing to a Warlock-era bill on the calendar is Hell’s Heroes IX, March 18–20, 2027, at White Oak Music Hall in Houston. Metal Church and Omen, the two bands Warlock opened for at Machinist Hall in January 1986, are both on it, with Omen billed as its final US show. Gammacide’s tour page at gammacide.com is the one to watch for the Toxic Mercenaries run, and Rotting Corpse’s own dates are on the shows page.

Sources

1. Dallas Observer: Dallas Metal Legend Warlock Is Releasing New Material, 27 Years After an Ugly Breakup (December 12, 2013)
2. Dallas Observer: Dallas Metal Legends Warlock Are Back After 27 Years Away (December 31, 2014)
3. Extreminal: Gammacide Interview With Rick Perry
4. PAO Productions: Ghosts of DFW Music History: Tombstone Factory
5. PAO Productions: Ghosts of DFW Music History: West Side Haunts
6. Buddy Magazine: Metal Origin Stories from the Heavy Metal Hall of Fame in Arlington (January 27, 2026)
7. Voyage Dallas: Meet Jerry Warden of Elmo Jones Productions/Heavy Metal HOF & Warlock Texas (February 7, 2018)
8. N1M: Warlock Texas band biography
9. ReverbNation: Warlock Texas
10. Metal Archives: Warlock Texas
11. Wikipedia: Rigor Mortis (album)
12. Blabbermouth: Texas Thrash Pioneers Gammacide Return With ‘Toxic Mercenaries’ (July 22, 2026)
13. Metal Centre: Hell’s Heroes IX 2027 lineup (August 21, 2026)

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