"The Monster is Loose" – 7:12 (Desmond Child/Nikki Sixx/John 5)
"Blind As A Bat" – 5:51 (Child/James Michael)
"It's All Coming Back To Me Now" – 6:05 (Jim Steinman) duet with Marion Raven
"Bad for Good" – 7:33 (Steinman)
"Bad for Good" – 7:33 (Steinman)
"Cry Over Me" – 4:40 (Diane Warren)
"In The Land Of The Pig, The Butcher Is King" – 5:38 (Steinman)
"Monstro" – 1:39 (Child/Holly Knight/Elena Casals)
"Alive" – 4:22 (Child/Michael/Knight/Andrea Remanda)
"If God Could Talk" – 3:46 (Child/Marti Frederiksen)
"If It Ain't Broke, Break It" – 4:50 (Steinman)
"What About Love?" – 6:03 (Child/Frederiksen/Russ Irwin/John Gregory) duet with Patti Russo "Seize The Night" – 9:46 (Steinman)
"The Future Ain't What It Used To Be" – 7:54 (Steinman) duet with Jennifer Hudson
"Cry To Heaven" – 2:22 (Steinman)
I got the new Meat Loaf album with much anticipation. I’ve been a fan of the Meat since growing up listening to Bat Out Of Hellblaring out of my parent’s record player. Later on, I picked up my own copy, and fell in love all over again. So I was anticipating an album that would be worthy the title, Bat Out Of Hell III, and was bitterly disappointed.
The album blows. Big time. There is none of the superiority that comes from the previous, Bat Out Of Hell albums. This one is just pure rubbish.
From the start with, “The monster is loose”, I wondered what the hell I had stepped into. The track didn’t even sound like Meat Loaf, but I held on, hoping for so much more.
Unfortunately it didn’t get all that much better. Although Meat Loaf has relied on Jim Steinman’s penmanship to get him through, not even the brilliance that is Steinman can save this album.
He even attempts to cover the Steinman penned, 'It’s All Coming Back To Me', which was a 1997 hit for Celine Dion. And he fails to do so.
Teaming up with Marion Raven to perform the song as a duet, he stumbled through it and leaves one feeling rather violated and horrified.
To make matters worse he performs one of my all-time favourite Jim Steinman songs, 'Bad For Good'. In 1980 Jim Steinman released his own solo album, titled 'Bad For Good', and sung a great many of the songs that Meatloaf has over the years, made his own. One of these songs was 'Bad For Good'. Now Meat Loaf may have a mighty, mighty voice, but Steinman has even an stronger voice, and truly placed his stamp on 'Bad For Good'.Now when I first heard, Lost Boys and Golden Girls' covered by the Meat on Bat Out Of Hell 2, I shrugged it off and thought ‘hey he’s trying right?’ but this time around it’s just too hard to stomach. His version of “Bad for good” is cringe-worthy. There has been only one other time in my life that I have wanted to use a CD as a coffee coaster, and that was Van Halen’s '3' album, with the truly atrocious Gary Cherone stepping up to the mike, but this just may very well beat that.
To me there is only one song that saves this album, and shows any attempt of what Meat Loaf used to be about, and it’s the song, 'Cry Over Me. That song is actually sung with a trace of the old, and the strength that Meat Loaf was well known for in his Bat out of hell days.
It’s just a shame that the rest of it does not do the same.
Worthy mention: 'Cry Over Me'Rating: 1/5 and even that’s stretching it.
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