Happy Birthday, George A. Romero: Here’s a Playlist of Awesome Metal Songs About Zombies

“They’re us, that’s all.” With that line from 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, George A. Romero went from hard-working indie director to visionary. With his 1968 underground smash Night of the Living Dead, Romero exposed the world’s burgeoning paranoia in the face of ‘Nam by introducing it to an endless horde of your flesh-eating neighbors and relatives. But with Dawn of the Dead, and later with 1985’s Day of the Dead, Romero helped us understand our own broken, shameful natures by showing us how humans would react if the ultimate rule — that life ends, and then we die — were broken in the most horrible way possible.

Without George Romero, there is no zombie horror, period. Sure, filmmakers like Victor Halperin and Lucio Fulci made incredible progress in the field, but the genre as a whole rests entirely on Romero’s shoulders. More so, without him, the concept of the Zombie Apocalypse — a world hopelessly overrun with the living dead — would not exist. Romero had us look death in the face, and lo and behold, we saw our reflections staring back at us.

Because of this, heavy metal owes Romero an indescribable amount of gratitude. The idea of the hungry, vengeful dead in all their carnal glory has fascinated metal fans for decades, and might be why we have death metal at all. Metal fans understand the zombie, shambling through an ongoing apocalypse after losing their innocence, with only consumption to ease their pain. Without the patron saint of Pittsburgh, this archetype we hold so dear would not exist — and neither, one imagines, would we.

George Romero died June 16th, 2017, but today would’ve been his 82nd birthday. In honor of his life before the grave, we decided to put together a playlist of zombie-themed metal songs, tracks that would not exist without him.

Check it out below. Happy birthday, George.