After “In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher Is King,” Meat Loaf follows up with a forgettable little interlude named “Monstro” and then “Alive,” which is another strong bit of power pop balladry that’s a bit heavier and a bit less dramatic than the others but works really well. It wouldn’t sound terribly out of place on the last couple of Avantasia albums and its only real problem is that Meat Loaf is strained a bit on the vocal.

But then we return to Steinman with “If It Ain’t Broke Break It,” a song written for the Wuthering Heights MTV musical Steinman had worked on in 2003. I admittedly have not watched that for two decades, but I remember “If It Ain’t Broke Break It” playing a prominent role and being wildly disappointed. I saw the title beforehand somewhere online and thought, “Ooh–that’s going to be like ‘Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back!’” but that just set my expectations way too high.

In a way, I was right to think of “Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back,” because this is a heavy, angry, screaming song. However, where the older song was based around a heavy guitar riff and synthesizers, this song, sort of weirdly, is actually built around horns and synthesizers, with the guitars careening around them. I’m not sure how much credit to give to each of Meat Loaf, Steinman and Child, but this song does at least explore new sonic territory. Eric Sardinas provides an electric slide guitar solo that isn’t terrible but seems more like a novelty than anything else. The rest of the guitars are loud, fuzzy, and have a strange tone that I cannot quite place but reminds me of the sound of a rubber band stretching. There isn’t much of a melody–it’s really more of a rhythm being shouted. The main hook is played by the horns and saxophones interplaying with the guitars. I am not a fan of the sound, but it’s something new.

Meat Loaf’s vocals work well here–he sounds much less restrained than he did on “In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher Is King,” and that fits a song that just has so little for him to do. The backing vocals include someone doing some great high-pitched wails but they aren’t credited separately from the other backing vocals, so I’m not sure who that is. (Okay, so, doing some research: Meat Loaf appears to be the source. This live performance makes that clear for one. And in that clip he would be at least 64 years old, assuming the attribution is correct. Maybe Meat Loaf really just came along too soon for his true calling as a metal screamer.)

The reason I say that the song has little for Meat Loaf to do isn’t just the fact that it has so little melody–it’s also incredibly repetitive. Almost the entire song is made up of repetitions of the chorus and instrumental passages, with the verses amounting to maybe 30 seconds total.

If I didn’t know better, I would never have believed the lyrics were written by Steinman. There aren’t many of them, and they seem confused about what they want to say. At first, he complains that everything is falling apart because he lost love and doesn’t know how to get it back. He complains of not knowing “the rules and laws and scriptures of love” and a verse later begs for “some works to live by/ . . . commandments to know/ . . . some fables and proverbs/ [and] some signs where to go.” So that sounds like a broken man pleading for help with love. But then there is a prechorus of “There are designated angels who might save your soul, no!/They give me words to live my and that’s all I know” that doesn’t make much sense on its own or in context. And then the chorus of “If it ain’t real, fake it/If it ain’t yours, take it/If it don’t exist you make it/If it ain’t broke, break it” (with a couple of other lines on a second repeat each time) seems to be talking to someone completely different than the verses or the prechorus. It’s a confused mass of almost random lines that don’t connect to each other or become anything meaningful.

Listening back to this one now, I do like it more than I remembered. The almost unhinged, loud noisiness of the track, Meat Loaf’s shouting delivery, and the sheer volume of guitar are all great. But it’s a song really lacking a great hook, its weird instrument mix just doesn’t cohere, it barely even has a melody, let alone a strong one, and the lyrics are just not good. It really doesn’t sound like a Steinman song, which does make it stand out, but that’s not entirely a positive thing.

Even a genius misses once in a while.