Crowd of Full Pockets

After the stunning album opener, Steinman surprisingly follows up with probably the closest thing he’s ever written to a straight-up metal song. It’s a cavernous, booming rocker that absolutely thrums with teenaged misdirected anger. On release, many critics ripped the lyrics on this album, claiming that they were infantile and ludicrous. I suspect an awful…

The first sound we hear on Bat out of Hell II is exactly what one would expect: a motorcycle revving its engine. I presume that it’s a guitar just with a better version of the motorcycle effect than what Rundgren had back in 1977, though it could easily be a synthesizer instead. When Roy Bittan’s…

Bat out of Hell was impossible to follow up. Steinman and Meat Loaf both proved it. Steinman found some other success for several years and Meat Loaf established himself as a concert attraction in Europe and Australia, but neither ever came close to the success of their first collaboration. It was definitely unfair to expect…