The day after he graduated from high school, Rob Cummings (aka Rob Straker aka Rob Zombie) ran away from home to New York City. Working odd jobs to support himself (including doing porn magazine layouts with his girlfriend, Shauna Reynolds aka Sean Yseult), Rob got barely got through.
In 1985, Rob and Sean formed White Zombie, named after an old (1933) Bela Lugosi film of the same name. Rob was the frontman, Sean was the bassist (without any prior experience), Tom Guay was the guitarist, and Ivan de Prume was the drummer. Guay would soon be replaced by guitarist Jay Noel Yuenger. The band's initial four releases were humble and not entirely successful: Psycho-Head Blowout in 1986, SoulCrusher in 1987, Make Them Die Slowly in 1989, and God of Thunder, also in 1989. The band then decided to move to California to strike it big, and they did, striking a deal with Geffen Records.
In 1990, when the band was working on the tour for their first album, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One, de Prume was asked to leave the band and was replaced with Phil Buerstatte. Phil lasted a year, before being replaced by John Tempesta of Testament. Rob and Sean would also break up on the same tour. The tour would last over two-and-a-half years, with 350 shows around the world.
La Sexorcista (released March 31, 1992) went platinum and White Zombie earned a "Best Hard Rock Performance" Grammy nomination. In 1993, the band won an MTV VMA for Best Hard Rock Video for the Rob Zombie-directed "More Human than Human", perhaps the band's most famous song to date. When the band picked up Tempesta, they started work on Astro-Creep: 2000, Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head (there's a node title for you!). And, just as the title would have you believe, the band covers everything from sex to death to even more bizarre, Satanic things as only White Zombie can.
The next year, in 1996, White Zombie released a highly successful remix album, Supersexy Swingin' Sounds. Fans of the band should note the presence of a cover of K.C. and the Sunshine Band's "I'm Your Boogie Man". In 1998, Rob Zombie decided to go out on his own and that effectively ended White Zombie.