Amen (rock musician)

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.[2] 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 2001 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.