My journey in this world began December 19th in 1978, and since then I’ve been a pain in the ass for the others (especially for the members in the band;))!! I’m from Ristiina, where I also nowadays spend my time if I’m not somewhere else...(NOTICE! that’s supposed to be funny). And maybe it’s worth telling that I’m a cousin of our jerk bass player Zoukki. And I want to make it clear that I’m NOT proud of it!



HOW DID IT ALL BEG IN?



I started very early with my dad’s drums. I was something like ten, when I got some drumming lessons, and I learnt some very basic stuff. In the year 1993 I got my own drums from my godparents. Then we started to play with Pirkka and Zoukki (I still regret that I asked him to buy a bass) and you could say that it was then when I started to play ”for real”. Actual training didn’t start IMO before the year 1996, though.



IDOLS



As far as drummers are concerned, my favorite is absolutely Helloween’s original drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg (who unfortunately died in 1995). And when talking about bands, the number one for me has always been Helloween. When ”Eagle Fly Free” really got me when I was ten years old, it all became clear for me...;) I think that Keeper of the Seven Keys part I&II are albums which have affected me more than any other band or album. That’s why the “pole position” goes to Helloween! Other great bands IMO are for example Iron Maiden, Gamma Ray (of which I have to say that Kai Hansen is really a Superman as well as a songwriter, as a guitarist and as a live performer), Blind Guardian, Sentenced, Anathema, Deep Purple, Nightwish, Queensrÿche... Aaargh, there’s a million of them! Oh well, yet I wanna mention Stratovarius (especially Episode-album).



BEYOND THE MUSIC?



Besides playing drums, I also play football, I do all kind of exercises whenever I have the energy for it (not too often...) and I like very much to go downhill skiing in the Alps (good routes and cheap beer!). I study speech communication at the University of Jyväskylä. Although nowadays I haven’t been so much around... I’m planning to graduate someday... And don’t you dare to ask what I’m going to be or do after graduating!!! I also like to hang out with my friends and do something nice such as take a couple of keskimökö (somewhere also known as beer) and then to ”heal the world”... My motto would be something like this: There’s no such thing as ”The meaning of life”. You have to create a thing you believe in, and make YOUR meaning of life out of it!