Mario Duplantier facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mario Duplantier
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Duplantier in 2017
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Mario François Duplantier |
| Also known as | Evil Mario |
| Born | 19 June 1981 Bayonne, France |
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| Occupation(s) |
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| Instruments | Drums |
| Years active | 1996–present |
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Mario Duplantier (born 19 June 1981) is a French-American musician and artist. He is best known as the drummer for the heavy metal band Gojira. Mario is known for his powerful and precise drumming style. He uses complex rhythms and unique drum fills. Since 2009, he has also been practicing painting and drawing.
Mario became interested in music early on and started playing drums at age eleven. In 1996, he helped start the death metal band Gojira with his older brother Joe. After teaching himself for a while, he went to the Agostini drum school. In 1998, he also helped start another band called Empalot. In 2001, Godzilla changed its name to Gojira. They released their first album, Terra Incognita, that same year. His side project Empalot paused in 2004 as Gojira became more popular. Mario has learned many drumming styles, from extreme metal to jazz, rock, and funk. In 2010, he showed his paintings in France. He has dual French and U.S. citizenship.
After touring and recording a lot, Mario has become famous around the world. People describe him as "one of metal's most creative and technical drummers." Music journalists and magazines have often listed him as one of the "world's best metal drummers." He has even been voted No. 1 four times.
Contents
Mario's Early Life
Mario Duplantier was born in Bayonne, France, on 19 June 1981. He grew up in Ondres, a town on the southwest coast of France. His family loved art, which helped him be creative. His mother, Patricia, was American. She was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Los Angeles. His father, Dominique Duplantier, is a French painter and architect. His parents met in Europe in the early 1970s, got married, and settled in Ondres.
Their old family house and his father's art studio were in the Landes forest. His father spent his life painting and drawing buildings for cities in southwest France. Mario has a brother, Joe, and a sister, Gabrielle, who is a photographer. His mother said he was a "funny, lovable, carefree, and open child." As a child, he spent a lot of time in his father's and sister's studios. Mario had many ear infections when he was young from swimming in polluted water. These experiences made him and his brother care a lot about the environment. His parents let him choose a music career, but they also wanted him to get a diploma. He earned a French high school diploma in literature. He later said, "we had fulfilled the contract, we could do what we wanted."
Mario's Music Career
Starting in Music
Growing up, Mario was greatly influenced by the music his mother brought into the house, like rock music, the Beatles, Tina Turner, and Michael Jackson. He remembers that the first song that inspired him was "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. Later, a Metallica cassette tape from his brother introduced him to heavy metal. He was amazed watching his brother play guitar. They both knew they would form a band together. Mario first tried drums while listening to Metallica, saying, "I took some chopsticks and started to beat everywhere on the table." His mother was very supportive and bought him his first drum kit. Encouraged by his parents, he started playing drums at age eleven. At twelve, he formed his first band with a school friend. They played songs by Nirvana, Metallica, and Sepultura. Then he found out about more extreme metal music.
At thirteen, Mario started practicing double bass drums seriously. He became a death metal drummer in his band called Putride. He was known for being very mature musically. He said, "In the rehearsal room, I was already a real perfectionist tyrant at thirteen. I wanted everything to be perfect." His brother Joe added, "they were ten times better than my band at the time. The first time he touched the drums, he was very, very good."
Godzilla (1996−2001)
At fourteen, Mario wanted to start a band with his brother Joe, who was nineteen. They wanted to play technical and melodic death metal. They put an ad in a local music store for a guitarist and a bass player. They quickly met Christian Andreu and his friend Alexandre Cornillon. In 1996, the band called themselves Godzilla. Mario remembered, "we immediately began to play in an extremely rigorous, almost obsessive way." Mario explained the band's goal:
The main goal was to show how we felt through art. It was music, but it could have been painting or theater. From the start, our music has always helped us express our emotions and energy. The power of metal music fit perfectly with what we needed inside. Its tribal and 'visceral' side, with its deep voices, was a good way to get rid of our bad feelings and turn them into positive energy. Because of this, the story of Godzilla, a giant monster born from nuclear radiation, matched our confusion and anger about some human craziness.
In 1996, Godzilla released their first demo tape, Victim. Even though it was made by amateurs, it showed a "syncopated groove." The band started playing in the underground music scene.
In 1997, the band released Possessed. By this time, Mario was developing his own drumming style. He still had not taken drum lessons. With his mother's support, he joined the Agostini drum school in France. He spent seven years learning jazz, Afro-Cuban, and rock drumming. He learned to be precise and use dynamics. He also studied music theory and learned to write drum sheet music.
In 1998, Alexandre Cornillon left the band. Jean-Michel Labadie joined as the new bass player.
Godzilla released two more demos, Saturate in 1999 and Wisdom Comes in 2000. These marked the end of their "amateur" period. Mario then started a very strict practice routine.
Empalot (1998−2004)
Empalot was a side project for the Duplantier brothers and their friends. It showed the early days of Gojira in France. The band had nine musicians on stage and toured France between 1999 and 2004. The project then took a break.
Playing rock and funk music in Empalot helped Mario add a "groovy aspect" to his drumming. He learned to use hi-hat openings and ghost notes, which he hadn't done much with Godzilla. There was almost no double bass drumming in Empalot's music.
Gojira (2001−present)
In 2001, Godzilla changed its name to Gojira. Their first album, Terra Incognita, came out the same year. It already had their unique "ultra-heavy, rhythmically precise crunching" sound.
In 2003, Gojira released their next album, The Link. This album showed more variety and focused on melody. It had an "industrial feel and almost atonal brutality."
At that time, Mario knew he needed to improve his drumming. He created a double bass drum exercise to play faster and with more control. Every day, he practiced for two hours, doing paradiddles on the double kick drums, except on weekends. He also did a second daily exercise: thirty minutes of paradiddles, then one hour of constant double bass. He finished with "straight singles on each foot" for ten minutes.
In 2005, Gojira released their popular album, From Mars to Sirius. This album helped them become well-known.
In December 2006, Mario went on his first North American tour with Gojira. They were one of the opening bands for Children of Bodom.
Their fourth album, The Way of All Flesh, was released in 2008.
In 2009, the band started their first North American tour as the main act. This showed them as a leading band in the French metal scene.
In 2012, Gojira released their fifth album, L'Enfant Sauvage. Mario's drumming on this album was more focused on raw energy. He wanted to keep a "live" feel. When recording drums, most songs were recorded in one take, with only small changes made later.
In 2016, the band released Magma, which became a big commercial success. The band made their music less complex on Magma, but it was still very heavy. The album's overall sound came from wanting to "change the dynamic" and "go straight to the point." They also wanted to add "more colors" to their songs. By late 2016, Mario had toured the United States seventeen times with Gojira.
Mario focused on the groove for the album Fortitude, but still used some polyrhythm patterns. He said that writing songs was more about the band working together than just his drum performance. The way they recorded drums was similar to L'Enfant Sauvage. In 2021, he still practiced his daily double bass drum routine. He also mentioned that drums would be more important on the eighth album, with more technical and experimental patterns. In May 2021, Mario appeared on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers. He played drums as part of his time with the 8G Band.
Most of Gojira's songs started from Mario's drum patterns. Examples include "Remembrance," "The Art of Dying," and "Explosia." Other songs were created when the four musicians jammed together, like "Sphinx" and "Born for One Thing."
Mario's Drumming Style
Mario Duplantier is known for his technical and precise drumming. He uses fast double-bass drumming, complex rhythms, mid-tempo rock grooves, and precise drum fills. He also adds jazzy drum breaks and blast beats. Graham Hartmann from Loudwire said that "Mario is one of metal's most creative rhythmic and technical drummers." Music journalist Spencer Kaufman noted that "his artful drumming provides color and shade to Gojira's signature light and dark sound, running from blast beats to groove and even to incorporating jazz elements." Revolver magazine described his drumming as going "from extreme-metal blasts to jazzy fills to huge stomping beats."
Mario plays drums in many different styles within Gojira's music. These include technical death metal, thrash metal, progressive metal, groove metal, and avant-garde metal.
He warms up for over an hour before each show. Gojira's live concerts often include his drum solos. Sometimes, Mario even plays guitar during live shows, switching places with his brother Joe. He practices the drums alone for four to five hours every day.
Mario says that Death's Sean Reinert, Metallica's Lars Ulrich, and Sepultura's Igor Cavalera are drummers who influenced him.
Mario's Personal Life
Mario Duplantier has dual citizenship in France and the United States. This means he is French-American because one of his parents is American. He has two passports, one from each country. He is married to Anne Deguehegny, a French videographer who creates visuals for Gojira's live shows. They have a daughter together. The family lived in New York City for five years, and their daughter grew up and went to school there.
On 5 July 2015, his mother, Patricia Rosa Duplantier, passed away from cancer in France.
To stay in good shape for drumming, Mario runs for less than an hour every day or every other day. He also does abdominal exercises to keep his body strong and improve his cardiovascular endurance. When he is in the French Basque Country, he goes bodyboarding and surfing for an hour each day. Mario has been bodyboarding since he was a child. Sometimes, he surfs with Robert Trujillo in California and Biarritz when Robert is on vacation there.
In February 2022, Mario said he lives in Biarritz, in southwestern France.
Mario's Art
Mario Duplantier has "developed his drawing, painting, and music skills in an environment of freedom and creativity." His mother, a yoga teacher, encouraged him to draw, paint, and do theatre.
His father was a photographer in the army. Mario became interested in photography early on with Gojira. He watched his sister Gabrielle take the band's photos. In the darkroom, the "mystery of her photos" and the "beauty of her black and white" work inspired him. When Mario was twenty-four, he started practicing art photography during a Gojira tour in North America.
In 2009, Mario started painting on drumheads. This happened when the band ran out of T-shirts to sell and needed money from merchandise during a show in Seattle. That evening, he sold ten drumheads that he had painted earlier that day.
His paintings and drawings were "unconsciously" influenced by his father's detailed drawings. He started painting while on tour between concerts in America. He said it was "a way of staying creative during the many dead times between dates, sound settings, etc." He is interested in the unconscious mind as the source of his painting style, which is described as "intriguing darkness." He said, "these are a bit gloomy paintings... both quirky and mystical, a bit in the spirit of Gojira's music." He admires the artist Hieronymus Bosch. In June 2010, Mario had a one-night art show called Cocktail à Base de Goudron (Tar Based Cocktail) in Biarritz, France. In December 2010, he had a second show in Bordeaux, France.
In 2016, he created custom artwork for the album Epitaphs by the Polish post-metal band Obscure Sphinx.
In 2018, Mario also worked with SceneFour, an art team in Los Angeles. This art publisher created "Art of Drums." This is a way of making visual art using long-exposure photography. They capture drum performances with LED-lit drumsticks, combining color, motion, and lighting. It took a year to create Mario's collection called Vers le Cosmos (Towards the Cosmos). It included ten limited-edition and signed canvases. Mario decided to donate some of the money from sales to The Ocean Cleanup. Through the Art of Drums project, Mario joined other famous drummers like Bill Ward and Chad Smith.
Mario's Equipment
Mario Duplantier uses Tama drums, Zildjian cymbals, and Remo drumheads.
- Drums – Tama SC Bubinga − White Pearl w/Diamond Inlay
- 22"x18" Bass Drum
- 22"x18" Bass Drum
- 14"x6.5" Snare Drum
- 12"x9" Tom Tom
- 13"x10" Tom Tom
- 16"x16" Floor Tom
- Hardware –
- Speed Cobra (HP910LSW)
- Iron Cobra Lever Glide Hi-Hat Stand (HH905)
- 1st Chair Ergo-Rider Drum Throne (HT730)
- Cymbals – Zildjian
- 13" A Custom Hi-Hats
- 21" Z Custom Mega Bell Ride
- 18" A Custom Projection Crash
- 19" A Custom Projection Crash
- 20" A Custom Projection Crash
- 10" A Custom Splash
- 20" A Custom China (x2)
- Other
- Mario Duplantier Signature Sticks
Discography
Gojira
- Demos
- Victim (as Godzilla) (1996)
- Possessed (as Godzilla) (1997)
- Saturate (as Godzilla) (1999)
- Wisdom Comes (as Godzilla) (2000)
- EPs
- Maciste All'Inferno (Gojira) (2003)
- End of Time (Gojira) (2012)
- Studio albums
- Terra Incognita (2001)
- The Link (2003)
- From Mars to Sirius (2005)
- The Way of All Flesh (2008)
- L'Enfant Sauvage (2012)
- Magma (2016)
- Fortitude (2021)
Empalot
- Brout (demo, 1999)
- Tous aux Cèpes (full-length, 2002)
- Empalot en Concert (live, 2004)
Awards and Recognition
Mario Duplantier has received many awards and honors for his drumming:
- In 2012, he won "Best Drummer of Modern Metal" by MetalSucks.
- In 2017, he won "Best Drummer" at the Loudwire Music Awards.
- In 2020, he was ranked No. 5 on Revolver magazine's list of the "5 Greatest Metal Drummers of All Time."
- In 2021, he won "Best Metal Drummer" at the Rhythm/MusicRadar Awards.
- He was also listed as one of "The Metal Drummers" by Drummerworld, a top website for drummers.
- He was ranked No. 21 on Loudwire's list of "The 66 Best Metal + Hard Rock Drummers of All Time."
See also
In Spanish: Mario Duplantier para niños
