Jensen Matthew Bellamy was born November 9th in 1977 in Chicago, Illinois. His family being fairly religious, Jensen spent majority of his youth in church. It was there that his musical creativity blossomed, playing drums, guitar, bass and cello in the church band and youth group. As he grew older and started to understand more about the world, he would begin to question doctrine and common beliefs. The proper little church boy quickly became the rebel. He never stepped out of bounds and was always respectful in his investigations, but he was clear set on discovering the truth for himself. Church started to become less and less fulfilling and Jensen opted out of weeknight youth services to catch local rock shows, finding salvation in music instead, much to the behest of his parents. He became engrossed in rock and hip hop music, secretly indulging in pop music. He quickly became a student of world music, and a bit of a concert whore. Jensen graduated from high school in 1995. Knowing how seriously music influenced his life, Jensen was excited to be accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While pursuing studies in Music Production and Engineering, he and several floor mates in his dorm decided to start a jam band just to keep their skills sharp. When the personalities flowed together and the band started to mesh well, the group decided to form an official band. With Jensen's experiences and reflections on growing up driving the lyrics, the band settled on the name Ex Nihilo, Latin for "out of nothing". The band played open mic nights and school festivals with their material, and decided to put together a small EP to sell for some extra cash. Using the school's recording studios and equipment, the band recorded a three-track. It gained a lot of play on Berklee's radio network and the band sold quite a few of discs after their performances. By some miracle, after debating a thousand times whether or not to drop out of school to pursue music full time, Jensen stayed in, completed his program and graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1999. The band kept performing local college shows between Boston, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey for the next year and a half. At a show at NYU, a rep from Immortal Records approached the band with the intent to sign them to the label. Eager to get an official tour and and label support for the material, the band signed with Immortal. With much interest generated, the band went back into a local studio and recorded a full-length self-titled album in 2002. Two years of touring later, the band was back in the studio and A Beautiful Lie--Ex Nihilo's first album on the Immortal/EMI label, was released in 2005. The first single, "Attack" was already generating much radio airplay. Jensen's strong voice and playboy looks had garnered the young man a lot of attention. Before heading off to tour, Jensen and his bandmates relocated to Southern California, finding it more convenient than Chicago or Boston to get into the studio and record material. Even while hard at work on the road, Jensen was always working on material for Ex Nihilo. During the two years break and a heated legal battle with his record label to possibly release the band, over one hundred and fifteen songs were written. In late 2007, after renegotiating contracts to quell a $30 million dollar lawsuit, he and his Berklee-bred bandmates got together to begin work on whittling down the number of songs, then worked on and recorded the top twelve. Production on the album was finished in late August of 2009, and the first single from the This is War dropped in November. The album was released that December to much critical acclaim. Jensen continued touring in support of the album through December 2011, with the band completing 300+ shows in the This Is War album cycle, earning the band a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. On August 13, 2011, Jensen married the love of his life, Barclay guitarist and prominent solo artist Lucy Davis in a lavish ceremony in New York City. The two--occasionally joined by Lucy's son Blake--reside between Los Angeles, CA and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.