The S.A. Slayer vs Slayer 1984 show at San Antonio’s Villa Fontana is one of heavy metal’s genuinely strange footnotes: two bands, identical names, one bill, zero cease-and-desist letters, and a mythology that has ballooned far beyond what actually happened on the night.
On 30 November 1984, the Los Angeles version of Slayer rolled into San Antonio for their very first Texas date, pulling up to the Villa Fontana in drummer Dave Lombardo’s Trans-Am with a trailer hitched to the back carrying their gear. Waiting for them inside were a group of local lads who had been calling themselves Slayer since 1981. The flyer a friend had knocked up for the occasion read like a homemade boxing poster: both bands listed with their respective hometowns, Los Angeles, CA and San Antonio, TX, under the slogan ‘1000 mph or death!’
How San Antonio built its own Slayer
The San Antonio Slayer had got there first. Bassist Don Van Stavern and drummer Dave McClain formed the band in 1981, the name a shortened version of Dragonslayer. Identically, the LA Slayer had also originally gone by that same reference point. By early 1983 the San Antonio line-up was settled: Van Stavern, McClain, guitarists Bob Catlin and Art Villareal, and singer Steve Cooper. Their 1983 debut, the Prepare To Die EP, was six tracks of unpolished early-80s power metal put out on local label Rainforest Records, making them the first of the two Slayers to release a record.
Texas metal at the time was no backwater scene. Houston had Helstar, Austin had Watchtower. Van Stavern reckons his band were bigger than both. Then word came through that 1,300 miles away in California, another band was using their name and preparing to put out an album.
‘We got a call: “Hey, do you guys know there’s another Slayer in LA, and they’re about to put out an album too?”‘ Van Stavern tells Classic Rock. Initially the thinking was simple enough, the LA Slayer, the SA Slayer, two territories, no drama. Then the Californians rang and said they needed to sort the name out. ‘We said, “We came out first.” And they said, “Well, we’ve been recording for a year.”‘
Some back and forth followed. Rumours of a cease-and-desist letter from Metal Blade Records circulated for years, Van Stavern flatly denies it, and Metal Blade founder Brian Slagel confirmed to Classic Rock that no such letter was ever sent. What did happen was that the LA band’s debut album, Show No Mercy, had better distribution behind it, and the San Antonio Slayer started getting squeezed.
The S.A. Slayer vs Slayer 1984 gig: what really went down
By the time the Villa Fontana show came together, the San Antonio Slayer were already half out of the door. Van Stavern, McClain and Cooper had been jamming with guitarist Mark Reale and were eyeing up a new project called Narita. Their completed full-length album, Go For The Throat, had been shelved by Rainforest Records because the band’s future was uncertain. A local promoter friend offered them a way back in: get the band together one more time, open for the LA Slayer on their home turf.
‘He said, “How about Slayer with special guests Slayer?”‘ says Van Stavern. ‘We went, “Wow, that would be crazy.”‘
The night before, the San Antonio lads drove to Austin to meet the Californians at their show there. ‘They weren’t dicks,’ McClain tells Classic Rock, ‘but we went, “Hi, we’re in the other Slayer,” and they were, nonchalantly, “Uh, OK, cool…”‘ Back in San Antonio the following day, the LA band arrived in Lombardo’s Trans-Am. ‘I remember them making fun of us cos we had my mom’s Cadillac with a U-Haul on it,’ says McClain. They shared a dressing room. The only one who stayed quiet, Van Stavern notes, was guitarist Kerry King.
The show sold out. Two local bands, Syrus and Militia, opened, then the San Antonio Slayer played their home crowd. ‘There were kids literally hanging off the balcony,’ says Van Stavern. ‘It was mayhem, stage diving, screaming, everything,’ adds McClain. ‘We felt like we owned the town.’ The LA Slayer delivered a different kind of spectacle: power metal against thrash metal, Van Stavern says, but both bands got a strong reaction.
Afterwards they hung out, helped each other pack down. McClain suspects Lombardo may have walked off with a couple of his cymbal stands. He’s never asked. Any notion of a ‘Battle of the Bands’ for the Slayer name was, according to Van Stavern, entirely retrospective. ‘We were already on our way out.’
The San Antonio Slayer played one more show and then split. Van Stavern rejoined Riot, now operating as Riot V. McClain is currently on his second run with Sacred Reich, with a lengthy stint in Machine Head in between. Guitarist Ron Jarzombek went on to join Watchtower. Singer Steve Cooper passed away in 2006 at the age of 47.
Go For The Throat finally surfaced in 1988, credited to S.A. Slayer so nobody would confuse it with the other lot. It became a cult item. ‘I get people coming up to me all the time and asking me to sign it,’ says McClain.
The last word on the whole affair might belong to Tom Araya. When the LA Slayer played San Antonio on 15 August 2018 as part of their farewell tour, Araya walked out wearing a T-shirt printed with the original ‘Slayer vs Slayer’ flyer. It was, Van Stavern suggests, a sweet acknowledgement of a shared, if lopsided, history. ‘Am I jealous of the other Slayer? That’s a no-brainer,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I’d love to have had their career.’
