Was it based on personal experience or simply passive observation?

What happened in the recording studio or on stage to make one song sound different from the rest?

These are just some of the question bands and musicians attempt to answer in Line 'em Up - the newest page of The Power Of Metal.Dk.

This is where your favourite bands comment on their albums, track by track, because as someone once said, “Ideas are the building blocks of ideas”.

Enjoy!

Here’s a chance for you to tell our readers about your new album “Save Tomorrow”.

But could you please start off by introducing the readers to you?

Bonrud is a melodic rock band based in the US lead by guitarist Paul Bonrud. Save Tomorrow is our new CD which is being released in September 2012 in Europe by Escape Music and Rubicon Music in Japan. The band is comprised of Rick Forsgren (formerly of the band Conditioned Response), Paul Higgins and Paul Bonrud. Our new CD was produced by legendary six-time Grammy winning producer Keith Olsen (Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, Foreigner, Sammy Hagar, Rick Springfield, Night Ranger etc...) The keyboards on the CD were played by Richard Baker (Santana, Saga, Gary Wright), Eric Ragno (Fergie Frederiksen, Graham Bonnet) and David Gross.  

And now onto “Save Tomorrow”… track-by-track, what inspired you, and what do what to express with this song etc.

01. We Collide

Paul Bonrud: This is the first song Rick and I worked on for this CD and it was also the last song we finished. Rick and I recorded the song and thought we had it finished until Keith Olsen completely rearranged the song. When Keith gave me his version, I literally had to make a flow chart to figure out what parts were removed and what parts were moved and repeated. The transformation was amazing! As a result, we went back into London Bridge Studio and re-recorded the entire song under the new arrangement. Keith is a genius! The song is about love and forgiveness and how stubborn pride often gets in the way of resolving differences. Sometimes our stubbornness causes us to let loved ones go to their graves without our differences being resolved. Forgiveness is as much a gift for the one who is being forgiven as it is for the person who is forgiving.

02. Bullet In The Back

Paul Bonrud: This song is about having the strength of conviction to persevere even when others are trying to tear you down and stab you in the back.

03. American Dream

Paul Bonrud: I wrote the music for this song the same night I wrote the music for “Bullet in the Back”. I was definitely going for a big classic rock sound here in the style of The Scorpions or Kiss. I had written lyrics for it myself under a different title but my lyrical theme just didn’t click with the music so I let Rick run with the lyrics and he came up with something brilliant.

Rick Forsgren: This song deals with the "growing up in Hollywood" theme. Young starlets who trade their youth and innocence for what they think will be fame and fortune. That fame often comes at a high price. Think Lindsay Lohan...less famous, more infamous.

04. Save Tomorrow

Paul Bonrud: This was one of my favorite musical ideas for the CD. The music wrote itself for me. I’m a huge Journey fan and their influence oozes out of the music on this track. Rick really delivered a fantastic vocal for this track and I love the lyrics he wrote.
Rick Forsgren: The title says it all really...this song is about living life with "grace". Letting go of the negative things in life that often keep us mired down and instead embracing the good we can find in ourselves and each other. We're often so busy living up to the expectations we have set for ourselves that we forget to listen to and see what's really going on around us. To use a line from a favorite move; “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. We work jobs we hate, to buy shit we don't need.” When we focus on a positive future, our past failures lose all control over us.

05. Liquid Sun

Paul Bonrud: This is one of the most artistic songs on the CD. The music came to me very easily and it has a Led Zeppelin / Heart / Seattle feel to it. I wrote the lyrics for the bridge but the rest of the lyrics were written by my friend Clyde Hannah. Clyde’s lyrics are very deep and come from the perspective of a social outsider who wants to experience true freedom from persecution and bigotry…to be accepted for who they are despite any differences. His lyrics are honest and deep. I really love this song. -:) .

06. I'd Do Anything

Paul Bonrud: This is one of the most straight forward upbeat pop rock songs on this CD but it is incredibly catchy. It’s a song about being so head-over-heels in love with someone that you would quite literally do anything to win their heart..

07. Last Sunrise

Paul Bonrud: I wrote the music for this song while I was kicking back on my couch with a guitar while watching a show about the sun on the Discovery channel. I was mindlessly noodling the music/riffs when they mentioned that millions of years from now, our sun’s energy will be depleted and will fade away. The thought immediately hit me that someday our sun will rise for the very last time just as each of us will eventually experience our own last sunrise. I turned over the music and the song title to Rick who once again wrote some incredible lyrics.
Rick Forsgren - This song is about the really very short time we have here on Earth. We spend alot of it arguing, fighting, debating truths, defending our convictions, etc. All this conflict has a tendency to consume us. We make getting our way a priority rather than building relationships. "When the lion lays down with the lamb" is a biblical reference to a golden age of the future when there is no sorrow, pain or sickness. To have your "last sunrise" come just as this utopia comes into being would be a very sad thing indeed.

08. Torn Apart

Paul Bonrud: This song is about getting your heart broken but having faith that closing the door on this relationship will open a door to finding the true love you are destined to be with. I really like how open yet layered this song is.

09. Blinded

Paul Bonrud: I wrote all the music and lyrics for this song quite literally in twenty minutes and had a complete rough demo recorded before an hour had passed from the initial conception. I was just in the zone that day. I actually had two other fairly complete song ideas that popped into my head that same day but I only had an hour to work on the music so this was the only idea captured. This is the quickest and easiest a song has ever come to me in such complete form. The song is about being blinded by love.

10. Dominoes

Paul Bonrud: This is a song about telling a good friend that happens to be a girl about how you are in love with another girl but what you don’t know is that your friend happens to be in love with you so you are accidentally breaking her heart while confiding in her. Furthermore, most likely the girl you’re in love with is in love with someone cooler than you and will break your heart. So we all fall down just like we’re dominoes… .

11. You're The One

Paul Bonrud: Good news! This song isn’t about having a broken heart! This song is about knowing that you’ve finally found the person you are meant to love forever and about telling them how you feel. This song really has an upbeat Bryan Adams feel-good vibe to it that I really like. –  .

12. End Of Days
Paul Bonrud: I wrote this song specifically for my wife. This song is about true love and loving that person until the end of your days. It’s a very dramatic song and it’s also one of my favorites on the CD.

Tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?

Bonrud: I think having great artwork is very important. Most melodic rock CD’s these days have very cheaply produced photoshop artwork because the budgets for these melodic rock CD’s are very small. If I cared about making money, I would have kept my budget small. However, I really wanted to make the best CD I could which is why I hired Keith Olsen to produce the CD and mix it. The cover art was expensive as well. Adriana Melo created the fantastic cover art for the new Bonrud CD. Adriana is a well-known Marvel and DC comic book artist who has drawn Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, Birds of Prey, Star Wars, and she was drawing a couple issues of Cat Woman for DC Comics while she created this cover art for me. I’m a big fan of her work and love comic books so it was fun to have her create the cover art.

Patrik Skoglund, September 2012