Music / Voltaire

Aurelio Voltaire Hernández (born January 25, 1967) is a Dark Cabaret musician, animator, and comic book artist popular in the Goth scene and among Anime and Science Fiction fans. Lately, he's been crossing over into Steampunk. His most popular songs include: "BRAINS!" ^note  Remember that episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy with the brain-eating meteor? Yeah, that was him. He also sang the opening theme "Land of the Dead" from the movie, Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure. and "When You're Evil." Most of his songs poke fun at the New York City goth scene, and anything else he either loves (Star Trek and Star Wars) or hates (New Jersey).

He was born in Havana, Cuba. His family moved to Jersey when he was a child (which he hated) and currently lives in New York City. He does claymation, mainly channel I.D.s, which he started when he was only 10 years old. He currently teaches Stop Motion animation at The School of Visual Arts in NYC when he's not touring.

His music is mainly satirical, but some of his songs can be quite serious and deep. Most of his songs have a Folk Music feel to them, though he often breaks genre barriers, going into Jazz, Country, even Rap.

It's also the name of one of history's most celebrated essayists, philosophers, and writers. But who cares about that? He does. A lot. In 2010, he started to use his first name with it, so to find his later work on iTunes, Pandora, Spotify, etc., you have to search for Aurelio Voltaire. He did this due to people making new bands with Voltaire in them, and so his fans can find him easily. He said on his official Facebook page:

"I got tired of there being other people releasing albums as Voltaire. There's an indie band in Germany and some American guy who makes instrumental hip-hop. Like, do these people not do a fuckin' Google search before naming their bands? Anyway, it was just easier to distinguish myself from them by using my first name."

Voltaire married his long-time girlfriend, Jayme, on October 1, 2009, at the Angel Orensanz Center in New York City. Voltaire has a son, Mars, from a previous relationship, born in 1998. On September 25, 2013, Voltaire announced on his official blog, that he and his wife are getting divorced, just short of their 4 year anniversary.

Voltaire has also become an active YouTuber, and his "Lair of Voltaire" can be found here, where he uploads music and vlogs (which he calls "Nooseletters"), as well as a home decorating web series titled Gothic Homemaking, all delivered alongside his literal Deadpan Snarker friend/corpse Orville Deadenbacker.

He is a musical collaborator with The Venture Brothers co-creator and fellow musician Doc Hammer; the two having something of a Friendly Rivalry.

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Discography:

• The Devil's Bris (1998)
• Almost Human (2000)
• Banned on Vulcan (2001)
• Boo Hoo (2002)
• Then and Again (2004)
• Deady Sings! (2004)
• Zombie Prostitute... (2006)
• Live! (2006)
• Ooky Spooky (2007)
• To the Bottom of the Sea (2008)
• Hate Lives in a Small Town (2010)
• Spooky Songs for Creepy Kids (2010)
• Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children (2011)
• BiTrektual (2012)
• Raised by Bats (2014)
• Heart-Shaped Wounds (2017)
• What are The Oddz? (2019)
• The Black Labyrinth (2022)
• The Last Halloween Party (2023)

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Tropes that describe him, his music, and his animations:

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: From the chorus of "The Industrial Revolution (and how it Ruined my Life)":
  "The in-du-stri-AL re-VO-lu-TION"
• Affectionate Parody:
  • "Coin-Operated Goi," a Jewish themed parody of The Dresden Dolls "Coin-Operated Boy."
  • According to Voltaire himself: "Riding a Black Unicorn" is basically an affectionate homage to Iron Maiden, but it can really be seen as one to Power Metal in general. From the silly title, to the hammy cello riff and distinctly Turilli esque violin solo, to the utterly absurd lyrics, it basically has it all.
• Angry Mob Song: "Stakes and Torches."
  Stakes and torches, scimitars and bayonets,
  Scythes, pitchforks, a sickle with a sharpened edge.
  Swords and spades, and mallets that are made of lead.
  Anything at hand, anything they can, help us to remove the head
  Of that filthy rich, fat son of a bitch, while he's sleeping in his bed.
• All There in the Manual: The album 'To the Bottom of the Sea' is intended to be a Concept Album inspired by class disparity and the Bush Administration. The plot primarily takes place in 19th-century Eastern Europe in a country ruled by a ruthless dictator who is overthrown by the peasants and eventually falls into debauchery and war, leading the protagonist to prefer a life of piracy. Most of this is only vaguely alluded to in the album itself, with the full details found in this video from Voltaire.
• Ambiguous Ending: "The Last Halloween Party." Do Gina and her dad die in the Martian/zombie apocalypse? Or do they (and possibly the other partygoers) survive to fight another day? The last lines cheekily imply that maybe the Martians aren't so bad, so it's possible our heroes have a chance after all.
• Anti-Love Song: "My Future Ex-Girlfriend."
• Ascended Meme / A Good Name for a Rock Band: According to Word of God: "This is the title track of my new album. The album was named by a young man named Alex who posted on my Facebook page "Voltaire's music is the audio equivalent of riding a black unicorn down the side of an erupting volcano while drinking from a chalice filled with the laughter of small children." When I read that I knew I had to name the new album that! AND I knew I had to write a song called that as well. And here it is!"
• Ass Pull: Voltaire invoked this in the song "The U.S.S. Make Shit Up" as a celebration of the many ass pulls of Star Trek. In fact, the whole final chorus is the page quote.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: "The Mechanical Girl" can grow to seven times her size and is armed with flamethrowers, rockets, and other powerful and destructive weaponry. Which is bad news for the king who takes her from her father and creator to try to make her his queen.
• Awesome Mc Cool Name: Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children. This particular one is notable because it's based on a colorful description of what his music is like that a fan wrote up on Facebook that he thought was so cool he needed to name an album after it.
• Awful Wedded Life: "Stuck With You" is about two horrible people married to each other and constantly war against each other. Subverted at the end when they are both dead and say that if they had to be stuck with someone, at least it was the other.
• Badass Adorable: The Mechanical Girl, according to some character sketches Aurelio did.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • "Blue-Eyed Matador." The matador thinks he's fighting The Devil in the shape of a monstrous bull for his soul. Turns out The Devil is the beautiful woman in the stands, distracting him from the bull instead.
  • "The Beast of Pirate's Bay" as well. You spend the entire song thinking the titular beast is going to be some horrible ugly monster...but it turns out in the final verse to be an injured, beached whale that the singer put the sign up, and created the song, to protect.
• Bad Santa: Santa Claus is Satan from his YouTube.
• Bawdy Song: "Zombie Prostitute", to name one.
• Being Evil Sucks: Initially mentioned in the last verse of "When You're Evil", but it's immediately revealed to be a lie.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: In Stuck With You, the wife retaliates against her husband's cheating by boinking his favorite dog, and all his other friends to boot
• Better by a Different Name: From "U.S.S. Make Shit Up":
  I was stranded on the Voyager
  And pounding on the door
  When suddenly it dawned on me—
  I'd seen this show before!
  Perhaps I'm in a warp bubble
  And slightly out of phase
  Coz it was way back in the sixties
  When they called it Lost in Space!
• The Big Easy: The setting of "Don't Go by the River".
• Bilingual Bonus: There's an English version of "Day of the Dead" with a verse in Spanish, and a Spanish version with an English verse.
• Black Comedy: "Dead:" "There's an infant that's been torn apart, now he's dead!"
• Black Comedy Cannibalism: "Cannibal Buffet" is a Hurricane of Puns about the singer becoming shipwrecked and kidnapped and eaten by a tribe of cannibals.
• Black Comedy Rape: Cantina. Oh good lord, Cantina.
• Brain Food: BRAINS! G'dur.
• Bread Milk Eggs Squick: In When You're Evil, the Card Carrying Villain Protagonist starts with a bunch of Poke the Poodle grade minor "evils", like being a fly in someone's soup or a pebble in their shoe, then out of nowhere talks about tripping elderly people down staircases.
• Break-Up Song:
  • "See You in Hell," along with several other songs from Boo Hoo (a breakup album).
  • Most of the songs on Heart-Shaped Wounds are also breakup songs, written either after his divorce with his wife or his breakup with his subsequent girlfriend.
• Bullfight Boss: "Blue-Eyed Matador."
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Luke Skywalker in "Cantina."
• Cannibal Tribe: "Cannibal Buffet" is a punny song about the narrator's encounter with a cannibal tribe who end up devouring him.
• Captain Obvious: There is a good bit of this in the first two verses or so in the song "Dead."
  "There a girl with a hole in her heart / And she's... Dead!"
• Captured by Cannibals: "Cannibal Buffet."
• Card-Carrying Villain:
  • "When You're Evil" is essentially one of these simply talking about how much fun he has in being a villain, "cause it's so easy when you're evil."
  • The man described in "They Know Me" fits this as well; he unabashedly steals from anyone and believes he can get away with it just because he donates to the church. It doesn't end well for him.
    Finally you've come to a place where they know you well.
• The Casanova: "Welcome to the World."
• Ceiling Banger: "The Man Upstairs"
  As far as I can tell, he juggles bowling balls
  but he's not good at it.
• Claymation: He does it and teaches it.
• Comedic Sociopathy: The Spanish version of "Day Of The Dead" is about one of the residents feeling the utter schadenfreude of the hapless American tourist's misfortune.
• Commie Land: And it seems he still liked it better than Joisey!
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: "Robber Baron" is about the industrial revolution version of this. He sits in his tower, counting his gold, while the children working his factories lose body parts on the job and go hungry.
  What cold heartless beast
  Can sit and have his feast every night,
  While their plight's always in his sight?
• The Cover Changes the Gender: Done in typically beautiful fashion in "Bachelor(ette)," his Perspective Flipped cover of the Björk song.
• Cranky Neighbor:
  • Voltaire has to deal with one in "When You're Dead."
  • He is the Cranky Neighbor in "The Man Upstairs."
• Creator Thumbprint: Voltaire writes many of his songs in the key of D Minor. Examples include "When You're Evil," "BRAINS!," "Goodnight, Demon Slayer," "Don't Go By the River," "Headless Waltz," "Beast of Pirate's Bay," and "Land of the Dead." The last two share similar melodies.
• Creepy Jazz Music: A lot of Voltaire's jazzier songs utilize this trope, for example, the Cajun-style "Don't Go By the River."
• Cry for the Devil: This happens literally with Almost Human, a song presenting the devil as a Jerkass Woobie.
• Curse Cut Short: "The Dirtiest Song That Ain't" is riddled with this. It's the entire point of the song.
• Cute Monster Girl: "The Zombie Prostitute". She's a rotten kind of cute, to be exact.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: "Ex Lover's Lover" gives us "What if I were to cut you up and mail each part to a different town?"
• Dark Is Not Evil: Voltaire himself could be considered a living example. Although his gloomy look he's known to be funny, nice, and ironic.
• Death of a Child: In "Dead."
  There's an infant that's been torn apart, now he's... Dead!
• Deal with the Devil: "The Devil and Mr. Jones" has an actor have the Devil and an angel have the man go either which way. The Devil tells him; "This is your fate, Mr. Jones, my dear! / Said the Devil to dear Mr. Jones / "You'll be loved by the millions and great at your task / but no one will see who is under the mask! / Cover your face, Mr. Jones, my dear / It gets hot as hell under the foam / and, like me, you will be in a crowd yet all alone..."
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: The narrator in "When You're Evil" is presumably one of these.
• Desert Skull: Referenced in "Fear and Anguish"
  From over the range that is where we found
  Scattered on the ground, fifty heads of steer.
  But what's real queer;
  We searched all around
  No other part was found!
• Despair Event Horizon: "Feathery Wings." A guardian angel a la It's a Wonderful Life, trying to earn his wings and get back to Heaven, but his success rate apparently isn't so hot, so he's stuck here. In the final verse he has a complete breakdown, sobbing about how much he hates it here and how alone he feels since the mortals at least get to leave.
• Disposable Sex Worker:
  • One of the options for hookers available at the disreputable brothel "Cathouse Tragedy" (From the song of the same name) is dead.
  • "Zombie Prostitute" is about the aftermath.
• Dismembering the Body: Voltaire sings about cutting up his ex-girlfriend's new lover in the song "Ex-Lover's Lover", and mailing each body part to another city around the world.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The MC of "The Straightrazor Cabaret" attacks and mutilates members of the audience he thinks aren't enjoying the show enough.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Feathery Wings turns the Angel of Death into The Woobie.
• Double Entendre: "The Sexy Data Tango." Techno Babble never sounded so dirty.
  • "It's Bigger on the Inside" plays with this as well.
• Draco in Leather Pants: "The King of Villains / When I Said I Was Evil" is implied to be an In-Universe example of this. The singer character speaks disdainfully towards the listener character, implying that they tried to get close to him because they liked him for being "evil" while grievously underestimating how dangerous he actually was. The song comes across as a major Take That! to the concept of Draco in Leather Pants by stating that villains are not to be trivialized or taken lightly.
  When someone says they're evil
  It's best to believe
  Like the skull on that poison vial you see
  
  A symbol so primeval
  It's not there to deceive
  It's there to let you know it's deadly
  Just like me
• Dragons Are Demonic: In "Crusade". Subverted, as it turns out the dragon isn't anywhere near as evil as the narrator believed.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • "Underground." Being dead and buried doesn't make getting dumped by the most wonderful woman in the world any less painful. Ultimately defied as the POV character ends the song having decided that the best revenge is not to kill himself, but instead to live long enough to dance on her grave.
  • The opening lines of "Feathery Wings" imply that this is the sort of thing the angel is trying to prevent. "Trying" being the operative word.
• Drowning Unwanted Pets: In "Stuck With You", a husband and wife are having an escalating argument about bad things the other has done; one of the thing the wife claims the husband did was drown her kittens "one by one"- and enjoyed doing so.
• Easy Road to Hell: "Hell in a Handbasket". The singer describes himself as neither a sinner nor a saint, but ends up going to hell anyways. He goes on to mock the notion: if he was so bad that he went to Hell, then there's no need to mourn him because everybody else will be there too!
  I'm going to Hell (He's going to Hell!)
  In a handbasket (In a hand basket!)
  And I'll have good company too.
  Cause if I was so bad, then there's no need to be sad,
  'Cause everybody else will be there too (Including you!)
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: "Zombie Prostitute" and "Reggae Mortis."
• Evil Feels Good: The singer of "When You're Evil" delights in their acts.
• Evil Is Petty: The singer of "When You're Evil" delights in petty acts.
  While there's children to make sad
  While there's candy to be had
  While there's pockets left to pick
  While there's grannies left to trip down the stairs
  I'll be there
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Voltaire sings "The King of Villains / When I Said I Was Evil" in a raspier, more growly voice than usual. This is fitting because the song is intended to be his greatest Villain Song yet, and it talks a lot about the nature of evil itself.
• A Family Affair: "Stuck With You" has the wife complain at her husband cheating on her with her sister.
• Felony Misdemeanor: In "Bomb New Jersey" one of the first reasons he lists why that state sucks is: "They all wear jeans that are Acid Wash, and yet they think I'm insane!"
• Finger in the Mail: The singer of "Ex-Lover's Lover" dreams about doing this with every part of his ex.
  What if I were to cut you up and mail each part
  To a different town? It would take the most
  Brilliant private eye the rest of his life
  Just to put you together
  A piece in each mailbox all over the planet
  From Moscow to Tokyo to Guadalajara
• Fly in the Soup: The singer of "When you're Evil" declares this as one of the ways he can annoy people.
• For the Evulz: "When You're Evil" is pretty much this trope's unofficial theme song because this is part of its refrain, "I do it all (various evil deeds) for free; your tears are all the pay I'll ever need."
• Freudian Excuse:
  • "The Chosen," a song from the POV of a (very insane) serial killer.
  First time I had sex was three
  First time consenting was 13.
  • Voltaire blames his childhood for his proclivity to write Villain Songs.
• Funny Schizophrenia: "The Chosen" has the lines "Roses are red, violets are blue. I'm schizophrenic, and I am too!"
• Gadgeteer Genius: The tinker in "The Mechanical Girl". "In a glen beyond the castle wall/ There was a tinker/ And he was a thinker/ The smartest man in all the world/ He made a mechanical girl." Especially when it turns out what the girl is capable of doing...
• Generation Xerox: Implied by the ending of "Crusade".
• Genre Mashup:
  • He describes himself on his MySpace profile as a "Neo-Victorian Gypsy Pirate Vaudeville Band."
  • His album, "Hate Lives in a Small Town" adds Country to this mash-up, and has been simply called "Gothic Country" by some of his fans.
• "Getting Ready for Bed" Plot: In "Goodnight, Demon Slayer", a dad puts his kid to bed and convinces them that they're a demon slayer who can kill even the devil so that the kid won't be scared of demons.
• Glasgow Grin: "The Straight Razor Cabaret."
• Goth: And a dedicated one at that. According to his friend and colleague Frank Greshim, the two once took a skiing trip together, and Voltaire wore full goth garb, complete with guyliner and black hair dye, under his snowsuit.
• Greedy Jew: Nodded to in "Coin-Operated Goi," which concerns the efforts of a heavily accented Jew to convert the eponymous Goi into "a coin-operated Jew, just like me and you."
• Groin Attack: What happened at the end of Death Death (Devil Devil Evil Evil Songs)
  The Devil said, "Come here, young man,
  My wife and I are your biggest fans!"
  So naturally, I felt I had it made.
  But then he Reached into an iron chest
  And he picked the tool that he felt was best
  And then he jabbed me, in the schlong
  With a pitchfork that had sharpened prongs!
  He turned to me, and winked and sang this song
• Grow Old with Me: "Anniversary" is about an aging couple whose love for each other has only strengthened with time.
  And they said our love would fade
  It gets stronger everyday...
  Some say things worth having take some time
  As they get older they get better
• Guyliner: Part of his regular attire.
• Hair-Raising Hare: The song Bunnypocalypse where the world is taken over by hordes of zombie rabbits.
• A Hell of a Time:
  • There's an amusing double subversion of this in "Death Death (Devil Devil Evil Evil Songs)."
  • Played straight in "Land of the Dead" where he sings about how great it is to rule in the underworld.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • The song "Oh Lord (Wake the Dead)" is mostly about this.
    They act like rabid monkeys, chained up at the zoo,
    And The Bible says that each of us is modeled after you.
    Well hell that should offend you Lord, if it does here's what you do.
    You just look down, shake your head.
  • Also comes up in "Almost Human", a Villain Song for Lucifer. He starts out trying to humanize himself, but ultimately decides that the trait that makes him "almost human"... is that he's a spiteful, jealous bastard.
    These tears are real, I'm jealousy
    I'm spite and hate, to the core I'm mean
    I'm nearly human! Look at me, I'm almost a human being!
• Hurricane of Puns: "Cannibal Buffet"
  Oh, trouble was afoot — they were eatin' mine
  Toein' the party line,
  I was startin' to feel, "these guys are heels"
  But, the truth be told, these cannibals have got sole
  Hey, numbskull, look at me, I got a bone to pick with thee
  You ain't humerus, stop ribbin' me
  Have a spine, bone up on settin' me free.
  • "It's Bigger on the Inside" is basically one long dick joke.
• Hypocritical Humor: Every verse of "God Thinks" ends with some variation of "God hates people putting words in his mouth."
• I Love the Dead: "Dead Girls" and "Zombie Prostitute."
• I Will Wait for You:
  • "The Sea."
    I stand under moors / Searching a sea of blue / And forever more, I'll wait here for you.
  • Also in "Anastasia."
• I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: "It's Normal for a Man."
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Trope Namer is revealed to be a rebel plot in "Expendable", with Biggs Darklighter encouraging the worst shots he can find to enlist.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: "Almost Human" depicts The Devil as this. He's such a loser you feel sorry for him.
• In the Style of: He remixed his own song "The Night" in the style of an 1988 Deathrock song for the Raised By Bats album.
• Ironic Echo: The chorus to "Crusade," and it gains another layer every time it comes around.
• Large Ham: Basically in every song he acts like this.
• Least Rhymable Word:
  • From "Straight Razor Cabaret": On his YouTube page, he said that "face raper" was the only thing he could think of that rhymed with "straight razor." When it was pointed out to him that the two phrases don't actually rhyme, he decided he didn't care.
  • During a live performance of "Cantina":
    Well then I saw that there Cantina
    "I'll go in for an Orangina!"
    [beat]
    Fuck you, it was the only thing that rhymed with "Orangina"!
• List Song: "God Thinks" is a list of various claims of people claiming it "God's message," with a few of his own thrown in.
• Losing Your Head: In the song "The Headless Waltz."
• The Masochism Tango: "Stuck With You" is about a couple arguing and listing off all the horrible things they've done to each other... With an ending that's fifty percent Bittersweet and fifty percent Squick.
• Manly Tears: From "The Ship's Going Down:"
  "For my son I had always a plan, for to raise him as best as I can. / Oh well you can bet, my only regret is to not see him grow to a man."
• "Miss X" Pun: In "When You're Evil", he claims that he goes by different names to different people:
  "To the gentlemen, I'm Miss Fortune
  To the ladies, I'm Sir Prize"
• Monster Is a Mommy: The actual Dragon in the song "Crusade". Its An Aesop interpretation relies on a "updated" history knowledge; cause of the songs namesakes provides a additional layer irony to such a interpretation.
• Mood Whiplash: "Beast of Pirate's Bay:" "Well, Blackbeard the Pirate, you know for what he's feared. [...] His beard turned white and all agree, He looks like Santa Claus." A just a tiny bit later: "This mighty whale was in such pain, we both began to cry."
• Murder Ballad: "Ex-Lover's Lover" is about a man who plots the death of his girlfriend's current lover, with various means of disposing the body suggested. It's different from most Murder Ballad examples in that the singer chickens out at the end.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In "Crusade," the main character has this reaction when he finds out that the dragon was only fighting to protect his young.
• New Sound Album: Almost all of his albums have a slightly different sound to them.
• Noodle Incident: Just what happened to him in New Jersey anyway?^note Besides his childhood, and what happened during it.
• Not Afraid of Hell: The song "Hell In A Handbasket" is all about how the singer isn't afraid of going to Hell, because to him being an ultra-religious killjoy is far worse than eternal damnation. He has already been through worse things in life, most of the people that are cool to be around will be there, and Hell certainly beats being in New Jersey. Subverted at the end of the song, though, when it's revealed that he doesn't even believe in Hell to begin with.
• Officially Shortened Title: "Death Death (Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil Song)" is so unwieldy that he usually abbreviates it to "Death Death Etc."
• Off with His Head!: In the song "The Headless Waltz."
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: "Dunce" is all about this. The lyrics lament the fact that the narrator always says something offensive.
• Otaku: Voltaire loves Elegant Gothic Lolita and also Japanese things it seems, though he also mocks it, especially in his comic Deady Big in Japan, which poked fun at every Japanese cliche he could fit.
  • The image of him on his live album cover is chibified.
• Out-of-Genre Experience:
  • Ooky Spooky had swing music on it similar in style to Cab Calloway (though this seems to have been permanently added to his repertoire now, and appeared earlier in "Brains"). Then came Hate Lives in a Small Town ...A country album.
  • He divulged in an interview a short lived idea for a Star Wars themed Hip-Hop album named "Republic Enemy".
  • He debuted his "country" songs on his summer 2010 tour and they don't sound too different from the stripped down arrangements of his normal songs, other than the lyrics not being about Goth culture and Star Trek...
• Parents as People: Gina's dad in "The Last Halloween Party." He's old-fashioned, judgmental, and harsh, but when the shit hits the fan, he risks everything to reunite with Gina before the world ends. They reconcile and share a father-daughter dance at what may well be the last Halloween party.
• Pep-Talk Song / Self-Empowerment Anthem: "Innocent," to everyone who is dealing with bullying.
• Perky Goth: Despite the goth look and generally dark songs, he can be a funny guy.
• Perspective Flip: Aside from "Bachelor(ette)," there's "Day of the Dead." In English is about a tourist getting freaked out when undead start showing up to party for Day of the Dead. The Spanish version? One of the Mexican natives laughing at the tourist in the English version.
• Place Worse Than Death: New Jersey, clearly if "Bomb New Jersey" and "Hell in a Handbasket" are any indication.
• Pointy Ears: On several album covers, before getting an operation to give himself Real Life pointy ears.
• Pun:
  • Often, but BiTrektual stands out as just blatantly obvious. The fact that the cover of the album has Voltaire cosplaying Clone Wars-era Obi-Wan Kenobi MAKING OUT with Hiraku Sulu (complete with Foot Popping from Sulu).
  • "The Headless Waltz" has head-themed wordplay.
    And you claim you have lots on your mind
    Well, we'll take care of that for you
    Get that damn thing off the neck
    I'm the head of the board now I'm bored of her head
    Sharpen up the blade boys, what are you waiting for?
    Here's where we all get ahead!
• Raised by Wolves: "Raised by Bats".
• Quarreling Song: "Stuck With You" follows the misadventures of the quintessential old married couple.
• Quirky Curls: Voltaire used to sport messy, spiky curls in the early 2000's up until around 2008.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: "Ravens Land" describes a woman with this appearance who is considered to be very beautiful.
  Ravens land upon her hair
  Clouds adrift on her skin
  A smile that tugs upon my soul
  And whispers gently in my ear
• Red Shirt: His song "Expendable" from BiTrektual is all about this trope.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Downplayed. "Land of the Dead" and "Beast of Pirate's Bay" use almost the exact same melody in the verses, though the former song is faster. However, their melodies go in slightly different directions in the songs' choruses.
• Religion Rant Song: Several, most notably "God Thinks", "Hell in a Handbasket", and "Oh Lord (Wake the Dead)".
• Robosexual:
  • The king in "The Mechanical Girl". King's wife leaves him and runs off with his steed, king demands inventor's robotic replacement for a dead daughter as his new wife, king tries to sleep with said robot, she attacks him with rocket launchers and flamethrowers, kills him and lays his kingdom to waste, returns home to dad. Lesson: Never steal a man's daughter from him. Especially if she has rocket launchers and flamethrowers. He was going to pitch a show based on this...
  • "The Sexy Data Tango", obviously.
• Robot Girl: "The Mechanical Girl".
• Rousing Lullaby: Goodnight Demon Slayer, which is about how, since nothing supernatural (up to and including the devil himself) could possibly be scarier than his son, they won't bother him while sleeping. It's still more likely to keep him up trying to pick fights with the Things That Go "Bump" in the Night than lull him to sleep.
• The Sacred Darkness: "The Night" speaks of the night in a reverent way.
  It just seems very strange to me
  That her quiet lonely streets
  And draped in all her mystery
  Could be so sweet and comforting
• Satan Is Good: Subverted in Almost Human. While in the song the Devil is presented very sympathetically, he's still presented as being bad. Near the end he declares that the reason he's almost human is because he's just as mean and hateful as they are.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The so-called "Beast" in "The Beast of Pirate's Bay" is actually just a beached whale that had tried to escape from whalers. The narrator tried to help it get out to sea when he was a boy, but the only thing he could do was keep people away by writing a sign and making up stories to scare people off.
• See You in Hell: The song of the same name.
• Sham Supernatural: "The Vampire Club" is about a nightclub where everyone dresses up a vampire, all of them crafting elaborate alter-egos and getting into drama over their costumes.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the song "To the Bottom of the Sea," right after the stanza: "Down at the bottom were treasures galore / But guarding so greedily / Was an angry horde of skeletons with swords / Down at the bottom of the sea! / You can hear someone shout "For the Horde!"
  • He gives one to himself in "Alchemy Mondays," when he says: "Hold everything, they're playing my song..." The music stops, and we're treated to a line from "When You're Evil".
  • There's also this bit from "The Vampire Club:" "Dressed in black from toe to head / Singing: "Bela Lugosi's still undead!"" Both songs are each basically a long Shout-Out and Affectionate Parody of the New York City goth scene from start to finish, with tongue in cheek references to real people. And are thus funny for those familiar with the scene.
  • There are also plenty of allusions to or paraphrasings of lines from "Bohemian Rhapsody" in "Hell in a Handbasket".
  • "Graveyard Picnic" is basically a long love letter to Edgar Allan Poe.
  • "Don't Go by the River" has a Shout-Out to Lestat from The Vampire Chronicles.
  • Bitrektual, aside from the obvious Star Trek and Star Wars, also has lines referring to or quoting: Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Galaxy Quest, among others.
  • "The King of Villains" has a segment consisting almost entirely of quotations from or about Disney villains. most of them from their songs. Also contains quotations from a couple songs from Jack Skellington, and a hero song that started as a villain song.
  ''That's why you can trust in me, just in me / 'cause I've got friends on the other side
  You poor unfortunate souls, you're diamonds in the rough / and now, with your permission, I'm going to do my stuff.
  (What are you going to do?) Silence!
  No one can deny, at what I do, I am the best / When this hellfire, this dark fire I spill
  As a specimen, yes, it's intimidating yes, / If this don't scare you, no evil thing will.
  So let's sound the drums of war like it's music in the air! / It's time to follow me so be prepared!
  Oh c'est la vie, mon ami, black sorcery's my dish of tea / (You've got to let it go!) My power flurries through the air!
• South of the Border: "Day of the Dead".
• Space Whale Aesop: The aesop of "The Mechanical Girl":
  Never take a child away from a loving parent. Especially not ones who make children who shoot rockets from their eyes.
• Stealth Pun: An easily missed one from "When You're Evil." It's rather brilliant, seeing as the meaning completely changes depending on how you're hearing it:
  To the gentlemen, I'm Misfortune; to the ladies, I'm Surprise
  (To the gentlemen, I'm Miss Fortune; to the ladies, I'm Sir Prize)
• Stock Ness Monster: "Beast of Pirate's Bay". Also mentioned in "To the Bottom of the Sea."
• Stop Being Stereotypical: The original version of "Vampire Club' is one towards particularly pretentious goths he often saw at clubs.
• Straight Gay: Han Solo, apparently, in "Cantina":
  I never would've that pirate was a homo.
• Take That!:
  • "The Industrial Revolution (and How It Ruined My Life)" has this to say regarding modern consumerism:
    In the name
    Of human greed
    The Industrial Revolution
    Fixed everything for everyone
    It came into our lives and gave us uniformity
    By taking choice away from you and me
  • "God Thinks" has the immortal lines: "And I... I know what God thinks: God thinks you're an idiot!"
  • Another one in "Hell in a Handbasket": "Oh, good Lord... We both know Hell don't exist — Except in the minds of the poor fools who believe!"
  • "Bomb New Jersey" is all about how much Voltaire wants to take revenge against New Jersey for sucking so much.
  • "Hell in a Handbasket" has another jab at New Jersey, when he says he'd rather be dead and in Hell than "alive and kicking in Jersey anyday."
  • "Death Death (Devil, Devil, Devil, Devil, Evil, Evil, Evil, Evil Song)" has a shot at George W. Bush.
  • He changed the lyrics to "Vampire Club" from targeting whiny, pretentious patrons at goth clubs to making fun of Twilight.
  • In "The USS Make Sh*t Up", he calls the fact that Star Trek: Enterprise is a prequel "such a bad idea you'd swear that Lucas was involved."
• Take That, Audience!: Voltaire's "Live" album contains a few monologues, some of which insult the audience a bit.
  Voltaire: So, does anybody here watch "Cartoon Network"?
  Audience: *Cheers*
  Voltaire: Excellent, excellent. A bunch of unemployed people in the house...
• The Something Song: "The Happy Song". Also "Lovesong", but that's a cover of The Cure.
• Under the Sea: "To the Bottom of the Sea."
• Unicorn: Voltaire's unicorn from the cover of Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of an Erupting Volcano While Drinking from a Chalice Filled with the Laughter of Small Children is big, black, and badass.
• Three Chords and the Truth: Nearly every song on "To the Bottom of the Sea" is in the same key (D minor) and don't stray from D minor, G minor and A chords. One of the two songs that is not in D minor is a parody of another artist's song.
  • "The Industrial Revolution (and How it Ruined My Life) is still in D minor, but it does at least dare to use a few extra chords in the introduction. Once the song proper starts up, it's back to the standard 3 chords. The chorus does key-change into F major, though.
• Villain Song:
  • "When You're Evil" is basically a hitman for the Devil monologuing about all the terrible things he does and why he loves doing them.
  • "BRAINS!" is about an outer space alien eating people's brains.
  • "Almost Human" starts out as one, with Satan spitting out his lines defiantly, until a little way through when it morphs into his Villainous Breakdown.
  • "In The Land of the Dead" is sung by an unnamed Satanic Archetype (possibly Hades) about his lifestyle in Hell.
  • "The King of Villains/When I Said I Was Evil" is designed to be his ultimate villain song, sung from the perspective of a Card-Carrying Villain who believes himself to be the wickedest in the land and aspires to be the king of villains, there is even a whole verse that almost nothing but Disney villain quotes and for a time was the trope's page quote.

• Warning Song:
  • "Beast of Pirate's Bay" involves the singer warning people at a tavern not to go into Pirate's Bay because of the beast that lives there, who scared Blackbeard's beard white and ate Captain Hook's remaining hand. Ultimately subverted, because the beast was actually a beached whale the singer was trying to protect by keeping people away.
  • "Don't Go By the River" plays with this trope. The song is largely about the singer warning the listener to stay away from the riverside, because there are deadly monsters there. However, the singer also drops a hint that he's one of the monsters, implying that he's a Card-Carrying Villain who is actually trying to scare the listener rather than show concern for their safety.
• Zombie Apocalypse:
  • "Brains" with the The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy using the song to boot. The alien turns the entire town into mindless zombies within the show.
  • "Fear and Anguish," "Zombie Prostitute," and "Reggae Mortis." "Zombie Prostitute" and "Reggae Mortis" both feature zombies, but the only one that can really be described as an apocalypse is "Fear and Anguish." Even there it was only one zombie which just announced the horrors to come before collapsing.

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