When Vinny Mauro was growing up, it wasn’t at all unusual for loud music to rattle the walls in his family’s home. As far back as the Jersey Shore native can remember, his father’s band practiced in their attic regularly, so the thumping of drums was something everyone in the house was well-accustomed to and expected.

But one day Mauro’s mom, Lynn, encountered something she didn’t expect, when she walked upstairs to find Vinny, still just a toddler, teaching himself to play the drums without any other adults in the room. Excited to see her son taking interest in an instrument, Lynn called up Mauro’s father, Joe, and insisted that they buy him a set of drums that were a little bit more his size.

The rest is history.

In the years since that fateful day, Mauro has honed his drumming skills and carved out an extremely impressive career in rock music. Just a few years after graduating from Jersey Shore High School in 2012, he found himself working as a touring musician with the immensely popular metalcore band Motionless In White, and hasn’t looked back since. Now a full-time member of that same group, Mauro is living the life most musicians only dream of — he’s playing to enormous crowds in some of the world’s most famed venues and helping create top-selling albums along the way.

For an idea of how popular Motionless In White is, the band sees well over a million Spotify listeners on a monthly basis. They also have over a million views on at least 10 different Youtube videos, with three of those videos producing over 20 million views. Most impressively, the group has put five songs on Billboard’s Top 200 chart, including 2014’s Top Ten hit “Reincarnate,” and has seen three albums (“Graveyard Shift,” “Reincarnate” and “Disguise”) reach No. 1 on the Hard Rock Album Sales chart.

Having the chance to play with Motionless In White is something Mauro described as “pretty random,” and an opportunity he never really expected. It all happened when the band he used to play with, Imperial, brought on a new member that happened to live with some of the guys in Motionless In White, who had just kicked out their previous drummer only weeks before heading out on an Australian tour. With the band in a pinch, Mauro was asked to try out through a video audition that saw him perform three MIW tracks (“Puppets 2,” “Immaculate Misconception” and “America”). Mauro seized the moment by slaying the audition and wowing his soon-to-be bandmates.

“I didn’t know anything about the band; I didn’t really listen to them or anything,” Mauro said. “I just knew that they were a touring band, so I was just excited for the opportunity.

“As soon as I sent the videos, the band was super stoked about it,” he added. “They needed an answer and they needed a drummer, so they decided to take a chance on me just from the video. I didn’t even meet them or anything before it was already set in stone that I was going to Australia.”

Upon hearing the news that he would get to join MIW on their Australian tour, Mauro said the first people he told were his friends. He didn’t want to tell his parents right away, he said, because the decision would force him to drop out of college.

“I knew my dad would be okay with it, but my mom would be really iffy about it,” said Mauro. “But I basically gave them no choice because I was like, ‘Listen, I already told the band that I am doing this, and this is what I want to do with my life.’ I told my dad like a week before I told my mom because I knew my mom would be on the verge of throwing up about it.

“But they love it now,” he added. “They literally come to multiple shows on every single tour.”

Though that Australian tour would only require the group to play eight tracks at every show, MIW had a headlining tour directly after leaving Australia that would require the band to play a full set each night. Because of that, Mauro said he needed to learn 18 different MIW songs right off the bat.

“It wasn’t really that bad because I was really focused on it,” Mauro said. “It was all I did for three weeks.”

Learning the songs might not have been too hard, but some stress did set in for Mauro when MIW flew to Los Angeles for rehearsals prior to leaving for Australia. Up until that point, he had still never met any members of the band.

“I was nervous, which is really weird for me because I don’t usually get nervous about anything,” he said. “It was pretty strange.”

Being a shy person, Mauro said he “didn’t really say much to anybody” on that whole first Australian tour. He had to share a hotel room with the band’s guitarist, but other than that he rarely ever saw his bandmates except for when they were on the stage.

“I was super nervous, so I would just be in my room not doing much at all,” said Mauro.

Mauro would later learn that everyone else in the band is just as introverted as he is, but that doesn’t mean that the guys in MIW don’t love hanging out together. While they don’t go out of their way to “do anything crazy” together, Mauro mentioned that it feels like they are all the “same person.”

“It feels like we have been best friends for my whole life,” he said. “It was pretty lucky for me to join this band because I have witnessed bands just not getting along, and crew members not getting along.

“I have never gotten into a fight with anybody (in the band),” Mauro added. “We have been on good terms ever since I joined.”

Having performed with MIW since 2014, Mauro has had the opportunity to play in some of the world’s most renowned musical venues. He cited the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado as one of his all-time favorite places to play because of its beauty. Mauro was also extremely excited to play at the Grand Ole Opry back in August, when MIW opened a show there for the legendary Alice Cooper.

“That was very surreal,” Mauro said, of playing the Grand Ole Opry. “Just to think about who has played there is just insane.”

Another opportunity that Mauro described as “surreal” was when MIW got the chance to play on the Vans Warped Tour in 2014. In fact, he said it was maybe the most fun tour he has done since joining the group.

“Growing up, Warped Tour was a really big part of my life — from the age of 12 I went every single year,” he said. “I obviously knew that Warped Tour was a big, big deal to people who were just like me. I was so excited.

“I met so many people on that tour that I am still really good friends with, and that I still talk to on a weekly basis,” Mauro added. “That tour definitely changed my life straight up.”

Playing in MIW has allowed Mauro to meet almost every single metal band that he has ever looked up to, he said. The band has toured with the likes of Alice Cooper, Breaking Benjamin and Slipknot, among numerous others. They’ve even collaborated with musicians from bands like Korn.

“It’s been crazy playing with any of those bands that I grew up seeing as this larger-than-life band,” he said. “I would never even think about seeing them in person, let alone meeting and becoming friends with them.”

One of the friendships that Mauro is most excited to have made over the years has been with Thomas Pridgen, who served as The Mars Volta’s drummer.

“Anybody who plays drums probably knows who he is, because he is crazy,” Mauro said. “He is really good, and he was one of the first big-name guys that I met that I was really amazed I was meeting.”

Other than performing for huge crowds at live shows and meeting some of his musical heroes, Mauro said his favorite part about playing in MIW is knowing that he now has fans of his own that study his performance style.

“To think that there are people out there — hundreds or dozens, or however many people — that think that way about me, that is the coolest thing in the world,” said Mauro, who has nearly 47,000 Twitter followers. “I am living on that side of it. I never really thought I would be in that position, where people are copying my drums or buying my drumsticks.

“That is weird to me and definitely the craziest aspect of it, that people look up to me,” he said.

Mauro feels that the only drawback to living the rock lifestyle is being on the road for 60 or 70 percent of the year, and missing out on family events. He said that this year he will miss seeing his family for Thanksgiving and his birthday.

Still, Mauro is very much a realist and knows exactly how fortunate he is to play with a band as big as Motionless In White, so he doesn’t dwell on the negative aspects of the job.

“I definitely know that I am a lucky guy, and I know that this kind of (thing) doesn’t happen to people all of the time,” he said. “The other thing, to go along with that, is that there are people who worked 10 times as hard as me to just not get anywhere.

“It is pretty amazing, and I am definitely blessed,” Mauro added. “I definitely feel grateful for it, and I am pretty aware of my situation and how lucky I am.”