POP ALBUM REVIEW : Surf’s Way Up in Newest Album From Legendary Rocker : * * * 1/2, Dick Dale, “Tribal Thunder” <i> HighTone</i>

The odds of somebody making an exciting, fresh-sounding album of surf-rock instrumentals in 1993 would seem only slightly better than the chances of somebody writing a new bestseller in Latin. It’s an idiom of the past, a wonderful influence to incorporate, but, well, not exactly happening.

But, having invented instrumental surf rock some 35 years ago, here comes Dick Dale to reinvent and reinvigorate the form with an album consisting mainly of new, original material.

What we have here is a tremendously varied collection that touches on everything from punk to blues, from Middle Eastern music to flamenco, that can vary tempos and create episodic, tremendously evocative journeys within the space of a single song.

And, thank heavens, Dale lets himself be Dale--there’s not a trace of the fashionable, metal-doodling Eddie Van Halen turns or note-shredding lyrical Satrianism that a less-confident guitar god might have incorporated after being away longer than Rip Van Winkle.

A big part of the reinvention lies with the basic approach taken by Dale and producer Scott Mathews. Have two drummers (Mathews and Tubes alumnus Prairie Prince) bash like mad in a double-cannon assault. Have Dale ride that pummeling wave, making rude, mastodonic, automotive and explosive sounds on his Strat, drenching most of what he plays in his signature, soaking-wet reverb--an effect that is the sonic equivalent of dipping rags in gasoline and stuffing them in a bottle.

What lights the torch and contributes to its explosive impact isn’t the instrumental flash and gimmickry itself, but the fact that said flash and gimmickry are contained within real compositions that have coherent structures, themes and definition.

The result is such tracks as “Nitro,” a slamming ride atop a punk-mosh beat that outraces Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hot Rod,” yet has the wit and savvy to slide temporarily into the delightful siding of a ‘50s slow-ballad R & B break.

“Shredded Heat” contains some of the most audacious-sounding guitar work this side of ‘60s-vintage Jeff Beck, as Dale paints the sonic equivalent of a highlights reel of Hollywood car-chase sequences. “Speardance” is another wild excursion, set to a chunky, scraping guitar rhythm, while “The Eliminator” is the closest thing here to a re-creation of Dale’s early-’60s sound.

Set against these all-out blasters are tracks that allow Dale to shine at more moderate tempos, like the heraldic “Trail of Tears,” which finds the king of staccato playing legato, sustaining his notes to achieve cinematic sweep.

Dale, who wrote nine of the 12 tracks, offers a superb medley of Link Wray tunes--”Caterpillar,” with its slinky, ‘60s garage-rock feel, and the remarkable “Rumble.”

The latter is a slow, ominous, macho Muddy Waters-like blues in which three descending guitar chords set up a wall of doom, only to have Dale marshal all his forces to try to batter it down. He sends streams of notes against that wall, skidding, probing and divebombing, as if in a desperate, last-ditch struggle to breach it and escape some awful fate.

Oh yes, the album includes one memorably manic Dale vocal, on the title track, a Bo Diddley-beat stomp so ferocious it sounds as if it could be a lost jam from the Who’s “Live at Leeds.” There also is a lower-keyed finale, in which the maestro plays one of his classic oldies, “Misirlou,” on an acoustic guitar.

This album could be as healthy an influence on today’s world of rock guitar as Dale’s seminal early tracks were three decades ago.

Surf’s up. Way up.