Brain (musician)

 ( Living People ) 

In the early 1990s, he joined Praxis, a musical project led by Bill Laswell and initially featuring Bernie Worrell, Bootsy Collins and Buckethead. The drummer was a mainstay of Praxis for the 1990s, featuring on most of their albums. Mantia recorded with Buckethead on many of Buckethead's solo albums, including Monsters and Robots, Colma, The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, and Bucketheadland 2, among others.

Sometime in 1995, Mantia was approached by his cousin Kristin Yee, who was managing industrial metal band Godflesh, to join the band as their drummer. He accepted the offer and performed on their 1996 album Songs of Love and Hate as well as Love and Hate in Dub. However, Mantia was unable to commit his time in Europe and left the band the same year. Some time later, Mantia rejoined Primus, touring with (and recording for) four years with the group, appearing on Brown Album, Rhinoplasty and Antipop.

In March 2000, Mantia joined the revamped lineup of Guns N' Roses after being recommended to singer Axl Rose by Buckethead (who himself had joined the band a few months earlier).

In 2003, Mantia appeared on several songs on Brian Transeau's 2003 release Emotional Technology as well as BT's score for the 2003 film Monster.

In 2004, Mantia toured with Tom Waits on the Real Gone tour.

Mantia toured several legs of the Chinese Democracy Tour with Guns N' Roses from 2000 until 2006, when he left the band to take care of his newborn child. Frank Ferrer, originally brought in as just a replacement drummer for the tour, eventually replaced Mantia as full time drummer for the band. Chinese Democracy was released in 2008, and featured drums from Mantia on every track except the title track. Mantia was also credited with writing the songs "Shackler's Revenge" and "Sorry". Parts of Mantia's drumming on the album were note-for-note re-recordings of Josh Freese's parts, who left the band before Mantia joined. Mantia was also responsible for arrangements on "Shackler's Revenge", "Better", "Street of Dreams", "There Was a Time", "Sorry", "Madagascar", and "Prostitute", initial production on "Shackler's Revenge" and "Sorry", engineering on "Sorry", drum machine and drum programming on "I.R.S." and Logic Pro engineering for the entire album.

Since leaving Guns N' Roses in 2006, Mantia has primarily been focused on music behind the scenes as a composer and producer despite receiving offers to tour with Nine Inch Nails, Korn and System of a Down.

In 2012, Mantia made a guest appearance (alongside fellow former GNR member Robin Finck) at Guns N' Roses' House of Blues West Hollywood show. Mantia played congas on "You're Crazy" and "Rocket Queen". He continued to occasionally work for the band on yet to be released remix material.

Mantia had a brief stint drumming with The Crystal Method in 2013 and 2014 (alongside Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus). These performances included appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Last Call with Carson Daly

In 2017, Mantia toured with Buckethead and Dan Monti as part of Buckethead's live show.

Mantia performed with Primus for the first time in 24 years at the Fox Oakland Theatre on December 30, 2024. However, with Les Claypool and Larry LaLonde auditioning for "the greatest drummer on Earth" in Primus, Mantia did not officially rejoin the band.

The two created a production music album called "Eclectic Cinema" alongside former Guns N' Roses guitarist Paul Tobias, and Guns N' Roses and Buckethead collaborator Pete Scaturro. Mantia has also worked with Tobias on several other stock music tracks.

The duo performed at the halftime show of a Houston Rockets basketball game on November 10, 2017, performing remixes of "Sorry" and "If the World" from Chinese Democracy, and a cover of KISS's "Do You Love Me?" from Destroyer.Archived at Ghostarchive and the target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Wayback Machine: