Album: Meat Loaf <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Bat Out of Hell III - the Monster is Loose, MERCURY

"The Future Ain't What It Used To Be", claims a track on this third instalment of the Bat Out of Hell series. That's clearly contradicted by the album itself, which appears to have frozen musical time exactly as it was three decades ago, when the original appeared. Everything is essentially the same, just a bit louder and more bombastic - when lead guitar breaks are required, widdly dinosaurs such as Brian May and Steve Vai are trundled out, while the pseudo-operatic overtones are exaggerated by overblown arrangements employing the most clichéd notions of classical "majesty" - a Carmina Burana-style chorale on "Monstro", an angelic child chorister singing Latin counterpoint on "Seize the Night". Even poignancy is wielded like a cudgel, when Uillean pipes and Celtic harp join Loaf's maudlin vibrato on the climactic "Cry to Heaven". Loaf himself provides the perfect tag-line for the project in "Land of the Pigs" when he sings: "In the land of the pigs, the butcher is king/ Listen to the marketplace sing".

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Seize the Night', 'If It Ain't Broke, Break It'