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| Mats and PM |
to start a new band, a bit more kick-ass and punky, more sleaze and less progressive. Burnitude was born, or Burner as the band was called in the beginning, but after receiving legal threats from a lawyer of another band called Burner I came up with the way more original Burnitude - “The eternal burning flame of ambition and love for what we do and our main ingredient in doing it, attitude!”.
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| Jan Viberg |
We recorded some demos/singles with Jan Viberg on the drums but in 2000 Matte left, he moved out of town, way up north to live another life. I thought that the foundation we had was too good to let go and decided to carry on with it as a three-piece band, handling the vocals myself, which was a first for me. Soon I met and hooked up with, what became my brother from another mother, whom I came to share many bands, projects and the stage with for so many years to follow. A little bit later we were joined by Mats Öström (Moey) who was a perfect fit to handle the bass, perfectly harmonising and balancing up my and Vesa’s virtuous, progressive styles and keep it all down to earth. I wrote loads and loads of Burnitude songs, giving more room for two of my greatest influences, Shotgun Messiah and The Hellacopters, that hadn’t quite got though in my music that much earlier, and we released a handfull of underground releases and did countless of gigs through the following six, seven years or so.
Around the same time, around 1998, I was thinking about maybe start writing in Swedish and wrote a couple of songs with lyrics in Swedish and then I accidentally discovered what came to be one of my greatest influences, Joakim Thåström, and got really, really hooked. I’ve never really listened to music in Swedish before - at least not since I was six or seven when I was totally hooked in Björn Skifs in the end of the 70’s. Inspired by Thåström I got deeper into writing lyrics in Swedish and was surprised how great they turned out and how much easier it was for me to write in my native language.I’ve always written lots of lyrics, I love lyrics. Many might not know it but like in Lizard Eye for instance, I wrote most of the lyrics, I wrote way more lyrics that I wrote riffs in that band. Anyway, I thought I couldn’t really put songs with Swedish lyrics in my current bands and project so I did what I always did, I started a new band/project and named it “Under” (the, pretty cool, Swedish word that is, meaning: marvel, under, during, beneath, below etc). I recorded some songs with, again Jan Viberg on the drums, and me handling the rest, and I went for Maiden style twin guitars. I liked to describe it as a mix between early Iron Maiden and Thåström. Vesa and I also started working on a second release, a full-length concept album actually, but we never had the time or opportunity to finish it. We never played live, which is pretty unfortunate since it was really great songs and a pretty cool a very well suited style.
These two bands/project were very important parts the process of moulding me into what I became as a musician. Those are the very foundation of what I’m doing today and will do in the future. In 2017 I made the tough decision to put both Burnitude and Under down, none of them having been active for about a decade anyway. It was time to move on and I would be implementing the unrecorded Burnitude and Under material into future solo releases, released under the PM Saari flag.
You’ll find all the recorded material at their various sites at:
Burnitude at Soundcloud | Reverbnation
Under at Soundcloud | Reverbnation
You'll find the first part of PM Saari History here and the second here.
