For someone who's made his reputation as one of heavy-metal's more creative axemen, Canadian Pat Travers doesn't play a hell of a lot of raveup guitar on Crash and Burn, his sixth LP with his Anglo-American group. In the past, Travers has often employed keyboards and synthesizers to fatten his sound, but in four of the eight songs here, he smothers his chops and those of second guitarist Pat Thrall with a rich yet generally pointless layer of electronic frosting.

Travers nearly pulls it off in the title track, pounding out full-blooded organ chords with an intensity matched only by his powerful guitar riffing in the Lynyrd Skynyrd-style "Snortin' Whiskey" and the band's bullish workout in the blues standard, "Born under a Bad Sign." If it wasn't for the self-consciously dramatic production, "Material Eyes" might pass as the work of a heavy-metal Genesis. But "The Big Event," an instrumental, sounds too much like one of those desperately contemporary TV sports themes. And Travers' big-beat ballad, "Love Will Make You Strong," could use some of the six-string punch he musters up for his Led Zeppelin-like cover version of Bob Marley's "Is This Love."

Pat Travers is to be commended for at least trying to break out of the guitar-hero rut. Unfortunately, on most of Crash and Burn, he's just spinning his wheels. (RS 318)

DAVID FRICKE