Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell

Bat Out Of Hell is the debut studio album by American musician Meat Loaf, originally released in October 1977 via Cleveland International and Epic Records.

Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman began working on songs for Bat Out Of Hell when they were both touring with the National Lampoon show in the early 1970s. After shopping around for a record contract deal, they performed some of the songs that Steinman had written for Todd Rundgren, who agreed to produce the album.

The songs had their genesis in a musical (called Neverland) that Steinman had been writing and this is probably why the album became such an underground hit, it was bombastic and ambitious in its scope, lyrical content and musical arrangements, unlike anything that had been released at that time in 1977, the era when punk rock and new wave were gaining momentum.

Meat Loaf and Steinman found it hard to get a record label to sign up to release the album, eventually garnering a deal with a small independent label Cleveland International Records.

The album tells the story of a young man who dies in a motorcycle crash while speeding and relives select moments from his life before his soul is taken to Hell. It opens with the title track "Bat Out Of Hell", and features a boy who is riding so fast and ecstatically that he is unable to see an obstruction until it is "way too late". As the unnamed young man slowly dies, he thinks back to the first time he met his girlfriend in the song "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth”.

As he dies, he reflects on wanting to see his love one more time played out in the song "Heaven Can Wait". He thinks more deeply into the beginning of his relationship with his unnamed lover and the first time he had sex with her, in the song "All Revved Up And Nowhere To Go".

Side B opens with the young man's dying thoughts turning to his recent breakup with the unnamed lover in the song "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad". The young man then begins to remember his first sexual encounter with his unnamed lover as a teenager, when he pressured her into having sex with him in his car in the song "Paradise By The Dashboard Light". This song features vocals by Ellen Foley, with whom Meat Loaf had met during the National Lampoon show.

As the young man begins to accept his inevitable death in the song "For Crying Out Loud", an angel appears to him and forces him to accept the fact that his girlfriend was really her trying to save him; however, due to his selfish ways he was unable to appreciate the support she tried to give him. As he finally dies, he is taken before God, who condemns him for his selfish behaviour and sends him to Hell.

The distinctive album cover art was illustrated by Richard Corben and depicts a motorcycle, ridden by a long-haired man, bursting out of the ground in a graveyard. In the background, a large bat perches atop a mausoleum that towers above the rest of the tombstones.

The album was slow to take off when it was released, initially taking off in Australia and the UK before the US. The album has gone onto sell more than 43 million copies.

It is a classic, timeless album, and easily the best and most cohesive of the Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman collaborations to date.

This album is a 2021 reissue on clear coloured vinyl housed in a single pocket sleeve with a printed inner sleeve and download, pressed in Europe via Epic Records.