Happy Birthday, Frank Frazetta: Here’s a Playlist of Epic Barbarian Metal

Few if any visual artist is as important to metal’s legacy as Frank Frazetta. The Brooklyn-born, Poconos-dwelling painter pretty much defined the genre of fantasy art with his epic paintings of ax-swinging barbarians, gun-toting spacemen, and hideous yet relatable monsters. In Frazetta’s artworks, one finds a mixture of classic myth, post-‘Nam downer imagery, and hard-rock attitude, all rolled into one. Readers only have to behold the classic painting of his iconic character Death Dealer to know just how influential Frazetta was on heavy music.

Perhaps most important, though, was Frazetta’s redesign of Robert E. Howard’s classic fantasy character Conan the Cimmerian. Early art from Weird Tales Magazine portrays Conan as sort of a skinny flapper guy in a loincloth, rescuing similarly-skinny women straight out of Cabaret. But from Frazetta we got Conan the Barbarian, the Conan that fans will remember forevermore: muscular and sullen, brow knit in thought, neck hung with bones, a blade the size of Texas clutched in his ham-sized fists. Not even Howard himself could’ve imagined the Cimmerian as this intimidating and iconic.

Bands immediately picked up on Frazetta’s uniquely-bitching artistic style. Among those artists who adorned their albums with his work were Yngwie Malmsteen (2001’s War to End All Wars), Wolfmother (2006’s self-titled album), and most notably southern rockers Molly Hatchet (1978’s Molly Hatchet, 1979’s Flirtin’ With Disaster, and 1980’s Beatin’ The Odds). Soon, Frazetta’s art wasn’t just synonymous with sci-fi paperbacks, but with killer stoner van art and songs about riding into battle.

Today would have been Frazetta’s 94th birthday. So in his honor, we’ve put together a playlist of sword-swinging, orc-slaying, Mars-conquering hard rock and metal tracks that we think owe him a debt of gratitude. And if you’re ever in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, go pay the Frazetta Art Museum a visit, because man, is it cool.

Here’s our playlist. Happy birthday, Frank.