Frank Klepacki

History

Frank Klepacki was born on May 25, 1974. At the age of eight, he was given a drum set. The instrument became the foundation of his sense of rhythm, though it would be years before he understood how to turn that rhythm into a career. He grew up in an era when video game music was transitional — no longer simple beeps, not yet orchestral, somewhere in between. The work that would make him known was waiting in that gap.

In 1991, at the age of seventeen and still in high school, Klepacki walked into Westwood Studios in Las Vegas. He was hired as a composer. This was not a common path. Most game composers at the time had graduated from conservatories or worked in film. Klepacki came in with a drum set and a willingness to learn the tools as he went. His first assignments were for games in the Lands of Lore series, the Dune adaptations, and The Legend of Kyrandia — projects that gave him room to experiment without the pressure of carrying a flagship franchise.

In 1995, Westwood began work on a real-time strategy game called Command & Conquer. The genre was still forming. There was no established musical template for it. Klepacki was asked to score the game, and he approached it as a fusion: electronic beats layered with aggressive guitar riffs, industrial percussion against synthesized bass. He later described the style as "Rocktronic." The music did not sit in the background. It pushed forward, matching the pace of tank columns and base construction.

The following year, Westwood released Command & Conquer: Red Alert. Klepacki had written a track he was calling "Hell March" — a stomping, militaristic piece built on heavy percussion and a marching rhythm. He told Brett Sperry, the game's director, about it. When Sperry heard it, his response was immediate: this has to be the theme song for the game. "Hell March" became the opening music, the piece that played when the game launched, the sound that players associated with Red Alert. In 1996, PC Gamer awarded Klepacki the prize for best original score, placing him ahead of Trent Reznor, who had composed the soundtrack for Quake. Klepacki later said he was surprised. The idea that video game music could win awards or generate fan mail was new to him.

Over the next several years, Klepacki composed music for multiple entries in the Command & Conquer series, along with Westwood's other projects, including the Blade Runner adventure game. His work became synonymous with the studio. In interviews, he has described his approach as study-driven: when a project required a musical style he had not worked in, he would study it relentlessly until he could capture its essence. This was not a romantic method. It was methodical. He treated composition as a craft that could be learned through repetition and analysis.

In 2004, Westwood Studios was absorbed by Electronic Arts and effectively shut down. Klepacki's last contribution to the studio was the music for Earth & Beyond, comprising four albums of material. That same year, several former Westwood employees founded Petroglyph Games. Klepacki joined them as composer and audio director. The studio's first major project was Star Wars: Empire at War, for which Klepacki provided the original score. He has remained with Petroglyph since its founding, continuing to compose and direct audio for strategy games.

Klepacki's career is a case study in what happens when someone enters an industry at the moment a genre is being defined and stays long enough to help set its sound. He did not inherit a template. He built one. "Hell March" became a reference point — not just for real-time strategy games, but for any game that wanted its music to feel militaristic, aggressive, and relentless. The track he wrote for himself, on a day when he was just writing what he felt, ended up outlasting the studio that published it.