{"id":41288,"date":"2009-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/bat-out-of-hell-iii-the-monster-is-loose-2\/"},"modified":"2009-01-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T00:00:00","slug":"bat-out-of-hell-iii-the-monster-is-loose-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/bat-out-of-hell-iii-the-monster-is-loose-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rock enigma we know as Meat Loaf has established himself as many things over the years: loud, bombastic, exciting, and perhaps a tad eccentric. His vision and voice range from a sneer to a snarl to a sonata (occasionally all in one song,) and the success of his first two Bat Out Of Hell<\/i> albums led to rarely paralleled anticipation for the third and final (?) installment. So, for this encore, what did the often operatic rock star do?<\/o:p><\/p>\n

He channeled his inner Wagner.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Yes, Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose<\/i> is Meat Loaf at his most grandiloquent, and yes, it borders on pompous. And, like any Wagner opera, it is too long. But if you\u2019ll stick around, you\u2019ll hear things you won\u2019t hear anywhere else, and you\u2019ll walk away stunned and appreciative.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Though this album rightfully did not receive the critical acclaim of the original Bat Out Of Hell<\/i>, I find it to be the most cohesive of any of the Bat<\/i> albums, and closer to the mark set by that first masterpiece than the second was.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Meat Loaf carries the menace necessary to carry a series called Bat Out Of Hell<\/i> into this album first with the title track, and then into tracks like \u201cIn The Land Of The Pig, The Butcher Is King\u201d and \u201cIf It Ain\u2019t Broke, Break It.\u201d It never ceases to amaze me how scary he can make that voice of his sound on songs like these, and how fun that sound can be. Like a teenager watching a slasher film, you\u2019ll find yourself entranced by fear, unable and unwilling to pull away. \u201cIn The Land Of The Pig\u2026\u201d is the closest thing to \u201cBat Out Of Hell\u201d I\u2019ve heard from Meat Loaf since I first heard that magical tale of motorcycle madness: crashing guitars, soaring vocals, and pure adrenaline.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Then there are the less fun but better crafted songs, like \u201cBlind As A Bat.\u201d This is your typical Meat Loaf love song: long, nice, but less than sincere. Theatrics and melodrama play better on grand stages, so when the simple sincerity of a love song enters the picture, the result is bound to be less than ideal. That said, \u201cCry Over Me\u201d may be Meat Loaf\u2019s best attempt ever. He is utterly believable here, and the listener can be excused for believing the pain expressed to be real, if only for a second. \u201cAlive\u201d does not equal \u201cCry\u201d in sincerity, but it makes up for it with musical excellence, from the piano introduction to the guitar solo to the backup singers. Oh yeah, and the lead singer I\u2019ve been talking about isn\u2019t half bad either.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

In the tradition of \u201cAll Revved Up With No Place To Go,\u201d this album gives us \u201c\u201dBad For Good,\u201d a straightforward, good-old-fashioned balls-to-the-wall rocker. Not much not to love here, although it could have been half as long and not suffered at all (a remedy that, applied to every song on the album, would raise my rating for it to an A.) The aforementioned \u201cIf It Ain\u2019t Broke, Break It\u201d carries a message and style that, strangely, reminds me more of Guns N\u2019 Roses than Meat Loaf and helps the viewer to rock out when necessary.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The duets, a Bat<\/i> standby since \u201cParadise By The Dashboard Light\u201d became the series\u2019 biggest hit, deserve some love. \u201cIt\u2019s All Coming Back To Me Now\u201d gives us an excellent pairing with Marion Raven. The two voices blend brilliantly, and their interplay is just superb. \u201cThe Future Ain\u2019t What It Used To Be,\u201d with Jennifer Hudson, can\u2019t compare, but to Hudson\u2019s credit, she doesn\u2019t try; she plays her role her way, giving the song some soul.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

My favorite song on the album is an unlikely choice: the final track, the brief \u201cCry To Heaven.\u201d A beautifully sung piano piece, here Meat Loaf appropriately closes out this installment — and I hope the series — in a fitting manner: once a bat out of Hell, he\u2019s gone through so much that now he can only do two things: \u201cCry, cry to heaven; if that doesn\u2019t do it for you, go ahead and cry like hell.\u201d<\/o:p><\/p>\n

I expected the closer to this trilogy to disappoint, much the way Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell<\/i> did, maybe to a greater extent. Instead, Meat Loaf proved himself a master of his craft. His voice has not diminished one bit, and neither has his power to spellbind an audience. His faults are the same you would expect: the album as a whole is too long, the songs are too long, and the lyrics are packed with weak clich\u00e9s. That said, few artists today have the ability to entertain a listener the way this man does. The message fades, but the music endures. Wagner would be proud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":28553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5932],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41288","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-meat-loaf","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41288"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}