There's not much that Aurelio Voltaire does not do. He is a full-on goth yet campy, fun, multi-talented, and self-aware. Born in Havana and raised in New Jersey, Aurelio Voltaire's boyhood fascination with horror movies blossomed into a teenage taste for the moody music of British rock bands including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and the Cure. Along the way, he said, "I slowly started wearing less and less colors until I had, unbeknown to myself, become a goth."

Once in New York, he started working in stop-motion animation, a career that led to gigs with TV networks including MTV, Nickelodeon, and Syfy, then known as the Sci-Fi Channel, and to becoming an instructor at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught stop-motion courses from 1996 to 2019. As a musician, he is a songwriter whose music can best be described as a collection of murder ballads, and tongue-in-cheek exercises in the macabre. Aurelio Voltaire's live shows, whether solo or with his skeletal orchestra, are full of stories and games. Voltaire has been recording and touring for 20 years.

He's released 11 full length albums. The first five were released by Projekt Records. These days, Voltaire self-releases most of his CDs. He is also the author of the books Paint It Black: A Guide to Gothic Homemaking and What is Goth: Music, Makeup, Attitude, Apparel, Dance, and General Skullduggery. Aurelio lives in the East Village surrounded by goth paraphernalia and regularly streams his YouTube show, Gothic Homemaking, which follows his home decor projects, goth themed recipes, and shopping tours looking for gothic treasures.