Brain (musician)

Bryan Kei Mantia (born February 4, 1963), known professionally as Brain, is an American rock drummer.

He has played with bands such as Primus, Guns N' Roses, Praxis, and Godflesh, and with other performers such as Tom Waits, Serj Tankian, Bill Laswell, Bootsy Collins, and Buckethead.

He has also done session work for numerous artists and bands.

Mantia was born February 4, 1963, in the South Bay city of Cupertino, California, to an Italian American father and a Japanese American mother.

As a teenager, Mantia became interested in such artists as James Brown, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix, acts that featured groove-heavy sounds.

When he was 16 years old, he started playing drums.

Because of his 'obsessive' study of the drum book Portraits in Rhythm by Anthony J. Cirone, Mantia was given the nickname "Brain" by members of his high school concert band.

Mantia attended the Percussion Institute of Technology in Hollywood, California, during the mid-1980s to further hone his craft.

During this time, he was a member of local funk-rock band named the Limbomaniacs (which would later become part of Ben Wa).

In 1989, Mantia joined Primus briefly, before breaking his foot, forcing him to pull out of the band.

In the early '90s, 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).

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.

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

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.

In 2010, along with Buckethead, they released the multi-CD sets Kind Regards and Best Regards.

Brain and Melissa composed part of the soundtrack to the video game Infamous 2, for which they were nominated for "Outstanding Achievement in Original Composition" by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences awards.

After leaving the band, Mantia made a guest appearance (alongside fellow former GNR member Robin Finck) at Guns N' Roses' House of Blues West Hollywood show on March 12, 2012.

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.

Since leaving Guns N' Roses, Mantia has primarily been focused on music behind the scenes as a composer and producer.

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

Other video games the duo worked on include, Midnight Club 2, PlayStation Home, ModNation Racers, Twisted Metal, Fantasia: Music Evolved and Infamous: Second Son (received the nomination Original Dramatic Score, Franchise at the 2014 NAVGTR Awards, shared with Marc Canham and Nathan Johnson).

They also scored the films Detention and Power/Rangers.

They have worked with music video director Joseph Kahn on several television commercials, including NASCAR, SEAT, and Qoros.

In addition, they scored a commercial for Johnnie Walker Blue which featured a computer-generated Bruce Lee.

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

Mantia has partnered with musician Melissa Reese on several projects, a composing team dubbed "Brain and Melissa".