Santtu Niemelä (Santtu "Skulldozer" Niemelä) is an independent power metal musician from Finland. Born in 1991, his guitar playing started at the age of 7 with a classical guitar his father had. It was an old finnish brand called Landola.

Santtu started to practice playing from tab books and by ear, and at the age of 10 he found a band called Iron Maiden. Influenced by that he asked his parents to buy him his first electric guitar and soon he began to make his own music and got more into Power Metal.

In his teen years he played in a local Punk Metal band called Saatanan Paarmat. It never really progressed and Santtu lost interest and left the band.

Soon after that he studied pop, rock and jazz-music at the Palmgren conservatory in Pori and graduated to musician.

Santtu continued to make music and since he has always loved instrumental music, it is the main thing he does. He sometimes has guests for vocals and other featured artists.

In December of 2016 Santtu Niemelä released his first cover album ”Boat on the River of Blood”, where he made metal covers of some old pop/rock songs and songs from popular games and movies etc.

In February 2017 he released ”Forgotten Souls” album, which holds only original songs and all the songs were written by Santtu Niemelä

His biggest influences are bands like Running Wild, Judas Priest, Helloween, Gamma Ray, Dio, Manowar, Iron Maiden, W.A.S.P, Twisted Sister, Hammerfall, King Diamond and Stratovarius.

Guitar players that have influenced his playing are Yngwie Malmsteen, Gary Moore, Rolf Kasparek, Andy LaRocque, Kai Hansen, Timo Tolkki, Francis Goya, K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton, Adrian Smith, Dave Murray, Janick Gers

Santtu plays Gibson Explorer guitars and Fender acoustic guitars.