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

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

[2][5] His mother, Patricia (née Rosa; 6 October 1950 – 5 July 2015), an American with Azorean roots,[6][2] was born in Wisconsin[7] and grew up in Los Angeles.

[9] Patricia, a student in the United States, was 23 years old when she met "and fell in love" with Dominique Duplantier during travel in Europe in the early 70s.

He worked for the mayors of cities in southwest France, drawing landscapes, street plans, traditional habitats while focusing on architectural details.

[2] Duplantier suffered from multiple otitis and ear infections at a very young age after swimming in polluted water,[3] which led to surgical procedures;[13] these events had awakened an ecological consciousness in the two brothers.

[14] Growing up in an environment where his mother brought rock music, the Beatles, Tina Turner, and Michael Jackson into the house profoundly influenced him.

[8] Duplantier recalled that the first song that inspired him was "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen,[14] and then later, a Metallica cassette tape belonging to his brother made him discover heavy metal.

[5][15] At the age of twelve,[10] he began his first band with his school friend playing Nirvana, Metallica, and Sepultura covers,[8] and then he discovered more extreme metal.

[16] At thirteen, Duplantier began practicing in earnest the double bass drums[14] and became a death metal drummer[8] in his band named Putride (death–thrash).

[18][8] Both brothers placed an advertisement in a local music store for a guitarist and a bass player[18] and quickly met the Lando-Catalan, Christian Andreu;[19] his friend Alexandre Cornillon joined them soon after.

In this sense, the myth of Godzilla, a hundred and twenty meters high monster born of nuclear radiation, corresponded to our incomprehension and our anger in the face of a certain human madness.

[22][23] Despite its amateur production "but above average", the demo displayed "an art of syncopated groove"; the band would begin performing on the underground circuit.

[8] Empalot was a side project of the Duplantier brothers involving friends in the line-up[27][28] and represented the early years of Gojira in France.

[27][28] The experience of rock and funk elements in Empalot's music brought him the "groovy aspect" with all the hi-hat openings and the ghost notes, which he had not previously practiced with Godzilla.

[32] In 2003, Gojira released the follow-up album, The Link, showing more versatility and an emphasis on melody, with "a quasi-industrial aesthetic and near-atonal brutality".

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

[46] 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.

[47] The majority of Gojira's songs were created from Duplantier's drum patterns, such as "Remembrance", "The Art of Dying", "Explosia", "Liquid Fire",[30] "Into the Storm", and the last part of "Grind", among others.

[49] Batterie Magazine's Sebastien Benoits noted that his drumming style and creativity led him to differentiate himself "from the codes of the extreme genre".

[50] Music journalist Spencer Kaufman of Loudwire commented 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 into the band's pummeling rhythms.

[30] Revolver magazine described his drumming style as going "from extreme-metal blasts to jazzy fills to huge stomping beats that rule the mosh pit".

[42] Duplantier names Death's Sean Reinert, Metallica's Lars Ulrich, and Sepultura's Igor Cavalera as musical influences.

[5] Duplantier's interest in photography began in the early days of Gojira as he watched his sister Gabrielle shoot the band's promotional photos "like a savage".

[5] In 2009, 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.

[65] He 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".

[65][64] In December 2010, he made a second exhibition, titled Cocktail à Base de Goudron edition 2, at the Rock School Barbey in Bordeaux, France.

[68][69] Through the Art of Drums project, Duplantier joined a group of drummers such as Bill Ward, Cindy Blackman Santana, Chad Smith, Dave Lombardo, and Steven Adler.