Meat Loaf • Bat Out of Hell
Friday Music/Epic Records FRM 34974
Two 33-RPM 180 g LPs
It seems totally strange now, but back in the mid 1970s Jim Steinman and Michael Aday (better known to the world as Meat Loaf) had great difficulty finding a record company willing to publish Meat Loaf’s second studio album, Bat Out of Hell. Three decades and millions of copies later, Bat Out of Hell has been remastered from the original tapes by Joe Reagoso and Kevin Gray at RTI/AcousTech.
The album consists of only seven songs, but most of them exceed five minutes playing time, including the nearly-ten-minute title track, which opens the album. Four of the tracks (You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad, and Bat Out of Hell), were released as singles.
The sound quality is reasonably good if two rather two dimensional, and the soundstage could be bigger. Sounds like cymbals decay nicely without sounding too splashy; thankfully this record was recorded decades before the so-called loudness wars crushed just about all of the dynamic range out of many records. The packaging is also first rate, featuring a heavy cardboard gatefold sleeve.
Very highly recommended, I think that Bat Out of Hell is an essential part of any record collection!