Roope was born in the Finnish town of Helsinki. At the age of 15, he founded the band Stone together with Janne Joutsenniemi. The band's style was initially focused a more traditional heavy metal, but they soon shifted to a faster and more aggressive sound, which was the key for them to to receive mass recognition. In the year of 1991, the band was dissolved, with a discography of four studio albums, one live album and one compilation. He is the main influence of many Finnish guitarists, especially Alexi Laiho (from Children of Bodom).

After the break up of Stone, he released an instrumental work with his brother, entitled Latvala bros. He then played with Dementia for around a year. In 1995 he joined Waltari after guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö left the band. They played together for 6 years before Roope decided to quit the band.

He joined Sinergy after vocalist Kimberly Goss moved from Sweden to Finland and had to reassemble the band; he assumed the role that previously belonged to Jesper Strömblad (from In Flames).

During the whole of his career, Roope had many side projects and played as a guest musician in many bands, the most notable of the being: Warmen, Nomicon, Pornonorsu, Jailbreakers, Gloomy Grim and Soulgrind. At times he also composed movie soundtracks.

When Alexander Kuoppala left Children of Bodom in the year of 2003 in the middle of their world tour, the members of the band were forced to search for a new guitarist in the time span of one month, when their next show would happen. The new guitarist needed to be able to learn about twenty songs to be played live. Alexi Laiho tried to recruit Kai Nergaard (from Griffin), but was unsuccesful. With little time left, he contacted Roope, the only guitarist he deemed skilled enough to manage the feat of learning the songs with enough accuracy to replace Alexander, who had been playing with the band for 10 years.

Roope played the Moscow concert on the 16th of August successfully. Despite the initial announcement that he would be a session player only, he remained with the band and recorded the Trashed, Lost & Strungout EP.

When he joined Children of Bodom, Roope made a deal with ESP, which already endorsed Alexi and Henkka Seppälä.

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