Rob Zombie (born Robert Cummings on January 12, 1966 in Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA) is a singer, director, and writer. His dreadlocks, gruff vocal style and fascination with B-movies have helped him become a distinctive element in American heavy metal. He is best known as founder, lead singer and songwriter for White Zombie. In recent years he has also established himself as a solo singer and as a director. His directorial career began with the horror exploitation feature, House of 1000 Corpses, and its sequel, The Devil's Rejects, released July 22nd, 2005.
He is the older brother of Powerman 5000 vocalist Spider One (Michael Cummings).
From a young age Zombie was immersed with TV, blue films and comics. Zombie 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
Zombie, still known at this time as Cummings, supported himself through multiple 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 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 Danzig with the loose, loud groove of Red Hot Chili Peppers and the greaser biker image of Cummings and Reynolds. There were only two minor problems – 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 became the only constants in the often-fluctuating band line-up.