oddly enough, a fair number of females. Bon Jovi's new album, defiantly titled New Jersey, is so purely commercial that it's practically beyond criticism (it would be more appropriate to evaluate its sales potential); Metallica makes challenging music worthy of considered analysis.

In 1988, if you name your album New Jersey, you suffer some Bruce comparisons. Bon Jovi's album has a song called "Homebound Train" (check Bruce's "Downbound Train"), with a chorus that goes, "I'm going down, down, down" (check Bruce's "I'm Goin' Down"). "Blood on Blood," a tale of male bonding, is "Backstreets" revisited, Bon Jovi-style: "Danny knew this white-trash girl/We each threw in a ten/She took us to this cheap motel/And turned us into men." If "Living in Sin" ended with a majestic sax solo, it would sound exactly like a Springsteen opus. So instead of claiming New Jersey as its own, Bon Jovi concedes that the state really is Bruce Country.

The relatively savage "Lay Your Hands on Me" kicks off New Jersey, but sugar-metal outings like "Wild Is the Wind," which are veiled in a smoke screen of distortomatic guitars, are the album's true heart. Slippery When Wet has sold 13 million copies, and the temptation to repeat 'a tried-and-true formula evidently proved too great. Besides echoes of that album, New Jersey has smatterings of Def Leppard, Van Halen, Mellencamp and, of course, the Boss. Jon Bon Jovi is brilliant ... at what he does. New Jersey has all the virtues and drawbacks of a popular record, hitting all the marks yet remaining thoroughly unidiosyncratic. Right now few of the tracks sound like hits, but there is no doubt that a year from now at least four will have become part of our collective consciousness.

The same cannot be said of Metallica. The band's breakneck tempos and staggering chops would impress even the most elitist jazz-fusion aficionado. But the music's dizzying twists and turns could be merely a reflection of short attention spans, the sonic equivalent of flipping channels on a TV set. "Blackened," which features stunning drum work by Lars Ulrich, has something like five changes in meter. "One" begins with lyrical acoustic guitars and works up to a ferocious rhythmic whirlwind, executed with the precision of a close-order drill. The song is about a soldier with no arms, legs, sight, speech or hearing, kind of an amputee T