Jussi Sydänmaa

Jussi Sydänmaa
Amen on stage at Transbordeur (Lyon, France)
Background information
Birth name	Jussi Sydänmaa
Also known as	Amen, The Ruler of the Anubis Dynasty, The Mummified One, The Severed One, The Buried Living Dead, The Unstoppable Avenger, The Ancient Assassin, The "So Be It, It Shall Be Done"
Born	June 26, 1972 (1972-06-26)
Origin	Mäntsälä, Finland
Genres	Hard rock, heavy metal, power metal
Occupations	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Electric guitar vocals
Years active	1996–present
Labels	Sony BMG
Associated acts	Lordi
Website	Lordi.fi
Notable instruments
Gibson Les Paul

Jussi Sydänmaa (born June 26, 1972 in Mäntsälä, Finland) is the guitarist, and one of the founding members of the Finnish metal quintet Lordi.

He is also known under his stage name of "Amen". His character is an ancient mummy avenger, the god of gods. "Amen was the great Egyptian god Amen-Ra. God of gods. After death Amen was mummified and couple thousands years later he was woken up to play in Lordi. Amen's public secret is women. He's an ancient lover."

He graduated as an Information Technology engineer in 2001 and has been making the website of Lordi.^{[citation needed]}

The municipality of Mäntsälä granted Amen with Hard Rock memorial on June 26, 2006.^{[citation needed]}Amen plays Gibson Les Paul Standard guitars.

Amen also recorded guitar riffs which were used by Ari Pulkkinen to create the soundtrack for PC game Shadowgrounds.

Biography

Jussi Sydänmaa was born on 26 June 1972 in Espoo, Finland, but spent his childhood and youth in Mäntsälä. He was interested in the guitar even before he began school. Sydänmaa's first contact with the band Kiss was in 1983 with the Lick It Up 'album. He was a passionate fan of Kiss, and he was bullied at school because of this.

At the age of 5, Jussi Sydänmaa got his first acoustic guitar and started guitar lessons. He enjoyed learning the instrument and how to play songs he liked, but he was too embarrassed to participate in his guitar play test. This experience shook young Sydänmaa, who gave up playing the guitar. Sydänmaa picked the guitar back up ten years later, when he began taking an interest in hard rock music.

As a young man, Sydänmaa played in various bands. The most promising was the Rag Flag, but they did not attain success. At the age of 25, Sydänmaa had come to the conclusion that the various rock-projects he participated in contributed to his failure. He went on to study newspaper and work in radio and later, commercial media communications. Sydänmaa completed a degree in 2003 in media technology engineering. After graduation, Sydänmaa did not go on to work in that field, as he had joined Lordi in the late 90s, and they had made their breakthrough in 2002. Because of Lordi's success, Sydänmaa decided to leave the IT engineering work to focus his career with Lordi.