Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell

anyone know what 'APEX' in the runout indicates? I have this Terre Haute pressing but it clearly has APEX etched and I'm not finding info on that designation.

A superb piece of rock and roll theater, and a great collection of ambitious songs, all of which were very well performed But I'm still hoping for a remaster that doesn't sound so damn muddy. If you love midrange, and hate both bass and treble, this is the LP for you.

Blind fools down there. Close your eyes and go on a damn good ride. This shit really is amazing. There is a reason people bought it. Which is when your high and living life this shit hits a chord in your soul. It's not about the potion but the magic.

Your going to die someday, so might as well regret shit you have done than regret shit you haven't done.

While laughing, even with the remastering, I find it impossible not sum up Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell as anything other than bombastic ... in every sense of the word, and in every aspect of the album, beginning with the fact that the album went platinum over fourteen times, topped the US and UK charts for a staggering 474 weeks, and included the musicians Todd Rundgren [who also produced the album], Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan [of the E. Street Band], along members of the Philadelphia and New York symphonies, and famed Yankees baseball announcer Phil Rizzuto. And it was all do to a little movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show which featured Meatloaf in a bit part that included the song “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights.”

It was a hot and weird summer, and I have no idea why I purchased this album, because today I find that it has absolutely no redeeming qualities, and just makes me embarrassed that I could have gotten swept up in the hysteria, the hoopla, the spandex, and the sheer tongue in cheek atmosphere ... one that at the time had America fueled with cocaine and poppers. The album was epic, as epic as Boston’s first release, and just as impossible to follow up. The orchestra moved in a dramatic fashion, lacing the background with symphonic energy, the guitars were loud, the drumming was staggering, and it all hit the listener head on, like a bat out of hell.

I’ve come to believe that there is something that shimmers the waves of the cosmos every so often, delivering rippled effects that profoundly effect all universes, and like a free box of Tide, Bat Out Of Hell slid in under the door of nearly every white American household, where this revved up saga of frustration, sexuality, and overwhelming rock n’ roll bliss that uses up and spits out every rock cliche that ever existed stands as a lone beacon of all that should never have come into existence. Listen, I’m not saying the album was bad at the time, it was what it was, and it certainly got radio airplay, even I knew all the lyrics ... yet that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t affected by those shimmering cosmic waves, or at least that the story I’m sticking to, because looking back with wiser and more restrained eyes and ears, this album was like a chocolate cake sugar rush that felt so good at the time, but left me with a glucose hangover, and blood sugar levels that altered the rhythms of my heart.

This is one of those albums that is impossible to rate and impossible to challenge, because it exists in a space and time of its own, one that I’m sure will be repeated at some future date when the cosmic ripples hit the other side of the universe and wash back over this tiny blue planet once again, where we’ll be treated to something equally as intense, insane, silly, over the top, and as subversively spartan as anything out of Mad Magazine.

Review by Jenell Kesler