Brooks Wackerman

Brooks Wackerman was born on February 15, 1977 in the USA. He has two brothers named Chad and Zach Wackerman. His brother Chad is a session drummer and has also played with Frank Zappa.

Brooks Wackerman started his musical journey at a very early age as he joined a group named ‘Bad4Good’ during his teen days. One year after he joined the group, they released their first album with the help of Steve Vai. Steve himself produced the album which was titled ‘Refugee’. Unfortunately, the group disbanded shortly and Brooks joined the funk metal supergroup ‘Infectious Grooves’, where he played drums between 1993 and 2000.

During his time with the band, Brooks became part of two albums, ‘Groove Family Cyco’ in 1994 and ‘Mas Borracho’ in 2000. He also toured with the band for their various shows and left in 2000 to work with ‘The Vandals’ for the album ‘Look What I Almost Stepped In’.

In 2001, he joined the American punk rock band ‘Bad Religion’ as their drummer, replacing Bobby Schayer. Brooks was the youngest member of the band as every single person in the band was at least ten years senior to him! He spent fourteen long years with the band recording five albums, ‘The Process of Belief’ in 2001, ‘The Empire Strikes First’ in 2004, ‘New Maps of Hell’ in 2007, ‘The Dissent of Man’ in 2010, ‘True North’ in 2013, and one EP ‘Christmas Songs’ in 2013. He quit Bad Religion in 2015 as he was looking for new challenges.

Meanwhile, Brooks Wackerman had also teamed up with ‘Tenacious D’ as a drummer for their 2006 ‘The Pick of Destiny tour’. He played for them at various festivals and concerts and later became a part of their ‘Rize of the Fenix tour’. He got the nickname of ‘Thunderskin’ from Jack Black on the tour and also made appearances on various celebrity talk shows including ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon’, ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’, ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’, and ‘Late Show with David Letterman’.

Searching for a different challenge, Wackerman joined the American heavy metal band ‘Avenged Sevenfold’ as their new drummer in 2015. Brooks recorded his first full-length album titled ‘The Stage’ with the band in October 2016. The drummer has also worked with other artistes on special associated acts like with Avril Lavigne for the song ‘Under My Skin’ and Tom DeLonge for the song ‘To the Stars... Demos, Odds and Ends.’ He has also worked with the band ‘Korn’ for an untitled album as well as teamed up with bassist Ryan Sinn for the thrash metal band ‘Innocent’.