47 Facts About Mario Duplantier

Mario Francois Duplantier was born on 19 June 1981 and is a French-American musician and artist best known as the drummer for heavy metal band Gojira.

Mario Duplantier established himself as a powerful, technically precise drummer, using polyrhythmic patterns and distinctive jazzy fills and drum breaks.

Mario Duplantier has been practicing painting and drawing since 2009.

Mario Duplantier acquired varied experiences through a range of musical styles from extreme metal, jazz, rock, and funk drumming.

Mario Duplantier has been described as "one of metal's most creative rhythmic and technical drummers".

Mario Duplantier has been listed as one of the "world's best metal drummers" by professional music journalists, magazines, and reader polls.

Mario Duplantier was born in Bayonne, France on 19 June 1981.

Mario Duplantier grew up in Ondres, southwest coast of France, near the Basque country.

Mario Duplantier was raised there in a family where arts played a significant role in creativity.

Mario Duplantier's mother, Patricia, an American with Azorean roots, was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Los Angeles.

Mario Duplantier's father, Dominique Duplantier, is a French painter and architectural drafter.

Mario Duplantier's father devoted his life to painting, charged with surrealism.

Mario Duplantier's father has published books and made art exhibitions in France.

Mario Duplantier has a brother, Joe, and a sister, fine-art photographer Gabrielle.

Mario Duplantier's mother described him as an "expansive, funny, lovable, carefree and open child", adding that "he was popular".

Mario Duplantier suffered from multiple otitis and ear infections at a very young age after swimming in polluted water, which led to surgical procedures; these events had awakened an ecological consciousness in the two brothers.

Mario Duplantier was free to choose a musical career, but his parents nonetheless encouraged him to obtain his diploma.

Mario Duplantier recalled that the first song that inspired him was "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen, and then later, a Metallica cassette tape belonging to his brother made him discover heavy metal.

Mario Duplantier was first impressed as he watched his brother play the guitar; they understood instinctively that they would join to form a band.

At thirteen, Mario Duplantier began practicing in earnest the double bass drums and became a death metal drummer in his band named Putride.

Mario Duplantier recalled, "we immediately began to play in an extremely rigorous, almost obsessive way".

In 1997, the band released Possessed, when they had passed beyond the experimental stage while Mario Duplantier began developing his drumming style.

At this stage, Mario Duplantier had still not taken drum lessons.

Empalot was a side project of the Mario Duplantier brothers involving friends in the line-up and represented the early years of Gojira in France.

At that time, Mario Duplantier knew that he had "to pass a new level", and created his double bass drum exercise to increase speed and control.

Mario Duplantier started a second daily exercise consisting of thirty minutes of paradiddles and then one hour of constant double bass.

Mario Duplantier finished with "straight singles on each foot" for ten minutes.

Mario Duplantier emphasized the groove on Fortitude while keeping some polyrhythm patterns, saying that the songwriting was more about band cohesion than drum performance.

Mario Duplantier mentioned a "return of the drums to the forefront" on the eighth album with more technical and experimental drum patterns.

Mario Duplantier appeared on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers to play drums as part of his residency with the 8G Band throughout the first week of May 2021.

Mario Duplantier is known for his technical and rhythmic heavy precision drumming with extended double-bass blasts, polyrhythmic lines, mid-tempo rock power grooves, precision tom fills, jazzy drum breaks, and blast beats.

Loudwires Graham Hartmann stated that "Mario Duplantier is one of metal's most creative rhythmic and technical drummers".

Mario Duplantier warms up more than an hour before each show.

Occasionally, Mario Duplantier plays guitar during live shows when he and his brother, Joe, switch places.

Mario Duplantier has dual nationality in France and the United States.

Mario Duplantier is franco-americain based primarily on the principle of jus sanguinis, applied through attribution a la naissance, because born outside the US but obtained its nationality as he fulfilled the condition stipulating that "at least one of his parents is American".

Mario Duplantier is married to French videographer Anne Deguehegny, and they have a daughter together.

On 5 July 2015, his mother, Patricia Rosa Mario Duplantier, died from cancer in France.

In February 2022, Mario Duplantier said he lived in Biarritz, in southwestern France.

Mario Duplantier has "developed his drawing, painting and music skills in an environment of freedom and creativity".

Mario Duplantier's father served as a photographer in the army.

When Mario Duplantier was twenty-four years old, he began practicing art photography during a Gojira's North America tour.

In 2009, Mario Duplantier began to paint on drumheads when the band ran out of T-shirts to sell and needed the revenue generated from merchandise sales during a date in Seattle.

Mario Duplantier began practicing painting on the road between two concerts in America; he said that it was "a way of staying creative during the many dead times between dates, sound settings, etc".

In June 2010, Mario Duplantier presented a one-night-only art exhibition named Cocktail a Base de Goudron, held at L'Atabal in Biarritz, France.

In 2018, Mario Duplantier collaborated with Los Angeles-based art team SceneFour.

Mario Duplantier decided to donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale to The Ocean Cleanup.