Pop Music Reviews : Tora Tora . . . More Ho-Hum Heavy Metal

Another metal band is born every minute, and Tora Tora is one of them. They’re from Memphis--former home, as they reminded us not more than a half-dozen or so times Monday in the course of their Roxy set, of Elvis Presley--and though they seem only a step or two past playing Bon Jovi songs at high-school proms in Smyrna, Tora Tora is the potential Next Big Thing of the week: young, cute, dumb and heavily promoted by A&M.; The debut album, “Surprise Attack,” isn’t really too bad, by teen-age metal standards anyway.

Their first single, “Walkin’ Shoes,” is not unlike a pleasant semi-boogie Van Halen waste track. Singer Anthony Corder has his AC/DC wolverine howl more or less together. They bounce up and down with enthusiasm, like happy Soviet rockers just glad to play guitar. Though the guys are on their first national swing--and sound it--they’ve already learned about rising-sun guitar straps and sleeveless Harley-Davidson shirts. There’s the requisite, if crudely drawn, banner of a partially clothed babe.

But Tora Tora seemed, at least on stage, to be metal form stripped of metal content, the swagger without the sex, the power chords without the passion, and came across as just another one of the vast army of generic poppy metalheads that crowd Strip stages on weekday nights.