A comics writer, filmmaker and rock star, Rob Zombie is best known as the front man for 1990s rock band White Zombie and for his song, "Dragula," heard in the movie The Matrix (1999). White Zombie had their major label debut in 1991 with La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1, an album that included the hit song "Thunder Kiss '65." They had another big hit a few years later with "More Human Than Human" (1995). Rob Zombie then began releasing records under his own name, and his songs popped up in TV shows, video games and feature films, including Howard Stern's film Private Parts (1997), End of Days (1999, with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Mission: Impossible II (2000, with Tom Cruise). Zombie is famous for his love of classic horror themes and has made two films, House of 1,000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005), and written for several comic books, including The Nail with Steve Niles, Rob Zombie's Spookshow International and Bigfoot with Richard Corben. 

Before he was a rock star, Zombie was a production assistant on Pee Wee Herman's Saturday morning show, Pee Wee's Playhouse... Zombie once recorded a duet with Alice Cooper for the television show The X-Files (starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson)... Zombie draws and designs the covers, logos and interior art for his albums, and he designed the hallucination scene for the 1996 movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996). 

Rob Zombie 
With his dreadlocks, gruff vocal style and fascination with B-movies, Rob Zombie (born Rob Cummings on 12 January, 1966), has become a distinctive and major force in American heavy metal. He is probably best known as a musician, being founder, lead singer and songwriter for White Zombie, as well as being a solo artist in his own right. However, in recent years he has extended his creativity into movies and videos. His debut feature, House of 1000 Corpses, has become a cult classic, building upon his career as a respected director of promo videos. 

The Devil's Rejects, his latest film, is to be released July 22, 2005. 

As a side note, he is the older brother of Powerman 5000 vocalist Spider One. 

Early Years 
Rob Zombie was born Robert Cummings on January 12 1966 in Haverhill, Massachusetts. However, for most fans what is most important about Zombie is not his birth, but the movies, TV and comics in which he was immersed from a young age. Cummings and his younger brother, Michael, immersed themselves in a heady mixture of classic monsters, pro-wrestling, EC Comics, 1960s counter-culture, gore movies and the weirder, more esoteric corners of the American artistic map. Both became interested in design, but Michael dropped out of art school to pursue an interest in music. Rob, however, moved to New York to pursue a career in publishing. 

Formation of White Zombie 
Zombie, still known at this time as Cummings, supported himself through a mixture of jobs, including working as a cycle courier. Most famously he was a production assistant on Pee-wee's Playhouse, but he also worked as a designer on pornographic magazines. In this time, he became involved with Shauna Reynolds, another up-and-coming designer. Together they shared a love of classic horror and sci-fi, heavy music and the weirder corners of American underground culture. 

They finally decided to form a band that would draw upon all these influences and so White Zombie was formed. Named after the classic Bela Lugosi black-and-white shocker White Zombie, it combined the theatrics of goth-metal acts like Glenn Danzig with the loose, loud groove of Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the greaser biker image of Cummings and Reynolds. There were two slight problems – namely that neither Cummings nor Reynolds was a musician. They split duties between them – Rob took vocals and the name Rob Zombie, while Reynolds became the bassist and was known as Sean Yseult. They were to be the only constants in the often-fluctuating band line-up. 

White Zombie achieved a cult status in New York. With the line-up of Zombie (at this time sometimes credited as Rob Straker), guitarist Tom Guay, bassist Yseult and drummer Ivan de Prume, they released three EPs through indie label Silent Explosion – 1985’s Gods on Voodoo Moon, 1986’s Pig Heaven and 1987’s Psycho-Head Blowout. In 1987, they released their debut album Soul-Crusher through Silent Explosion, re-releasing it the following year through punk label Caroline: importantly, this saw the first regular use of the name Rob Zombie. 

Credit: horror.about.com