POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Thunderstorm of Heavy Metal

This decade’s first wave of American metal drew its inspiration from the sloppy excesses of ‘70s glam, the theatrical hard rock of Aerosmith and the New York Dolls. The second, “speed metal,” came more or less from the stripped-down attitude of punk.

It was probably inevitable: The latest surge of heavy metal thunder is descended from the more polished, less interesting hard rockers of the ‘70s, the sort of technically proficient arena bands--Boston, Supertramp, Foreigner--that punk and new metal were rebelling against in the first place. The concert by three of these bands on Tuesday made the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium seem like the Hall of Dinosaurs.

Winger, the headliners, are extremely popular with girls--singer Kip Winger is this year’s metal stud-puppet--and you could hear the high-pitched shrieks even over the cranked PA when somebody threw red roses onto the stage. Bare-chested Kip--Michael J. Fox’s idea of a heavy-metal dude--jumped, skipped, whirled like an Ice Capades star and crooned slick radio songs that sounded oddly like updated Styx. There was a puzzling version of “Purple Haze” from which all the syncopation had been removed--it seemed sort of like a Quiet Riot tune--but the fans fired up joints and pumped fists as if it were Hendrix in the flesh.

Mr. Big is the newest project of Billy Sheehan, a metal vet best known for playing bass behind David Lee Roth, and it’s about what you’d expect from a band built around a bass player. Sheehan had more stacks of amplifiers than his guitarist, for one thing, and the drums could barely be heard through the bottom-heavy mix. Fast unison blues licks were precise, the five-minute bass solo virtuosic as a Paganini Caprice. It sounded like a bunch of studio guys who learned rock by reading a book. Opening power trio King’s X, though more similar to Rush than they’d like to admit, were the only real metal band on the bill--the only one a Metallica fan would recognize as a metal band, anyway--and their blend of sludgy ZZ Top riffing and U2-style drones and hooks was perfectly controlled.