Between Light and Leech: Matthew Jaffe and the Art of Frontier Death Song
The first time we saw Frontier Death Song by Matthew Jaffe, it felt less like discovering a painting and more like opening a door.
Commissioned as the original poster art for the Laird Barron episodes of First Word on Horror, Jaffe’s piece captures what words often fail to say — how Barron’s fiction thrives in the space between brutal reality and cosmic collapse. But this isn't the first time the two creators' paths have crossed. Jaffe’s journey with Laird Barron began years ago when he painted the cover for Occultation, a now-iconic anthology that cemented Barron’s place among the modern masters of horror.
For this piece, Jaffe turned to Frontier Death Song, a short story steeped in myth and menace.
“In First Word On Horror, Laird reads aloud passages from his short story ‘Frontier Death Song’. The story draws inspiration from the old Norse legends of The Wild Hunt, a mythological pursuit of gods flying through the night sky, as a motif to describe the horrifying cross country journey that the main character must take while being hunted by a host of evil creatures that have him in their cross hair.
The 1872 painting by Peter Nikolai Arbo, ‘The Wild Hunt of Odin’, immediately came to mind while reading the story, and it provided a springboard for exploring different ideas for my own piece. While subtle, my piece echoes the composition of that painting.”
Jaffe’s Frontier Death Song echoes that structure — but leans hard into the unknown. Like the stories it’s born from, the painting doesn’t hand you answers. Instead, it conjures an atmosphere that asks you to feel before you understand.
“Lovecraft believed that atmosphere and mood was paramount in suggesting the supernatural, describing only what was necessary to enable the imagination fill in the gaps with what was intentionally left out.
Lovecraft did this with words; as a visual artist I try and do so with paint.”
The result is a portrait not just of Laird Barron, but of the dark universe his stories inhabit. Bathed in the eerie glow of the Old Leech moon, Jaffe’s brushwork withholds just enough to let your imagination start whispering.
“One way I can create atmosphere in my work, which I hope can be seen in my portrait of Laird, is by holding back a lot of detail and leaving large parts of it in darkness.
The portrait is the identifiable element of the composition; it's essentially a point of entry into the painting before the mind begins to wander further out into dark and liminal spaces beyond.
It's in this darkness, lit only by the uncomfortable light of the Old Leech moon, where viewer and painting can hopefully enter into a deeper and more meaningful dialogue.”
You can see more of Matthew Jaffe’s work on classic horror collections and album covers released by Yuggoth Records — and we highly recommend that you do. Follow him on Instagram at @matthewrjaffe to step further into his haunted worlds.
We were honored to collaborate with Matthew for this piece. His ability to paint what others only feel makes him a natural fit for First Word on Horror.
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What Matt does with light, subtle detail, and dark negative spaces is truly sublime and utterly masterful. His work can be at once intimate in subject yet epic in what's implied. Seeing one of his pieces at NecronomiCon '19 was eye-opening in that there is a quality of depth achieved that draws you in, making the scene feel very real.