Bonrud
Save Tomorrow

It wasn't more than a week ago that I criticized Bonafide and their latest review by being so "unimpressed" I said their traditional hard rock was killing music. Today I'm reviewing another traditional (or classic) hard rock band with a band name not too far from the Swedes but instead of irritated and disappointed I'm stunned this time. This is how this kind of music SHOULD be played!

Bonrud is the project by multi instrumentalist Paul Bonrud and along with vocalist Rick Forsgren and drummer Paul Higgins he's now made his second album under the name. I didn't hear the first album and the first song I heard from this album was one of the songs at the very end, called You're The One and i can only say it was love by first sound. 'Save Tomorrow' is absolutely packed with songs in quality with You're The One - songs with choruses stronger than a nuclear bomb, melodies better than Wayne Gretzky and more powerful than a Formula one engine. The music goes on like an icebreaker just forcing its way through the frozen oceans completely unstoppable. This is 47 minutes of good old hard rock that keeps interesting from beginning to end, now how often does that happen?

Well, I wasn't completely honest just now. This is not pure hard rock of the traditional kind, there is also a small doze of AOR in 'Save Tomorrow' as well, which especially can be heard in the songs Save Tomorrow, I'd Do Anything, Torn Apart and You're The one all though it's never a question of the album converting from the traditional hard rock it represents. I'd Do Anything also have a reference to one of the most classic AOR songs in history as it steals Neal Schons classic train-guitars from Don't Stop Believin'. The funny thing is that the producer for this album (Keith Olsen) has worked with Journey (as well a lot of other bands, like Fleetwood Mac, Ozzy Osbourne, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Whitesnake, Scorpions, Bad Company, Steve Perry, Sammy Hagar, Santana, Jethro Tull and the list goes on but I think that's about enough to prove my point that the production side of this album is pretty good, awesome and fantastic.

The album opens with the concrete heavy We Collide, which goes like a rock crusher as the heavy guitar riffs starts to pound through the song. In the background we can hear moody keyboards and the choruses are short but with the cool sound effects from Paul Bonruds guitars it's still very memorable. At the second song I get a bit of a dilemma as my tracklist is completely different compared to the official tracklist for the album. I don't know which one is right, probably the one I don't have, which makes me a bit unsecure of how good this album actually would sound if you'd rearranged them because I can't really see how it would be better than in the order I've heard them, which is: We Collide, End Of Days, Save Tomorrow, Liquid Sun, I'd Do Anything, American Dream, Torn Apart, Blinded, Dominos, Last Sunrise, Bullet In The Back and You're The One. It not completely different to the official tracklist (which you can see to the left) but still only four of the twelve songs have the same track number.

There are not too many ballads, actually there's only one (Liquid Sun) but there are a couple of semi ballads too but they are all pretty much faster than real ballads. So, in other words it's not an album that sits around and drags its feet behind - it's an energetic album in every way and the energy is as high as it's tower of power - this is an album that is catchy, heavy and really, really good!

'Save Tomorrow' might just be the best album I've heard in this more traditional form of hard rock because it's a genre I haven't really got too many favorites in and don't get overly excited when I hear. Bonrud on the other hand has made something that makes me really excited! An album that is so superb it will kick the living hell out of other bands in this genre for so many years that no bands is gonna want to make albums of this kind as they will be so inferior they will be laughed at… maybe. Maybe not, but it's still a textbook example of how this genre should sound. 'Save Tomorrow', I think You're The One!

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