Vinyl Record

Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell

Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell on 2LP vinyl. A 1993 record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

2LP · 1993

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 1993 2LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell is the 1993 sequel that should have been impossible: Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman returning to the operatic teenage thunder of Bat Out Of Hell sixteen years later and somehow making the scale feel current again. The album is not modest about anything. I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) stretches pop radio into a widescreen melodrama; Life Is A Lemon And I Want My Money Back turns complaint into arena gospel; Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are treats memory like a car crash seen in slow motion. In an early-1990s rock moment often defined by stripping things down, this record expands everything: piano, choir, guitars, dialogue, desire, regret and absurdly long titles. Its power comes from total commitment. Meat Loaf sings Steinman's mythic language as if every chorus is a legal testimony, a confession and a dare.

The album matters because it reintroduced Meat Loaf as a blockbuster figure at a time when bombast was supposedly out of fashion. It proved that Steinman's maximalist rock theatre still had a mass audience in 1993, and that sincerity could be gigantic without turning empty.

For collectors, this is the necessary companion to the original Bat Out Of Hell rather than a footnote. It captures the reunion of singer and writer at full scale, with the 1990s production giving the old mythology a new surface. Own it for the comeback story as much as the songs.

Grand-scale theatrical rock with piano drama, power-ballad architecture, gospel-sized backing vocals, hard-rock guitars and Steinman's cinematic excess.

Recommended for: Fans of theatrical rock and power ballads; Collectors pairing the Bat Out Of Hell albums; Listeners who want maximal 1990s arena drama.

Is Bat Out Of Hell II a direct sequel to the 1977 album? It is the second album in the Bat Out Of Hell sequence and reunites Meat Loaf with songwriter and producer Jim Steinman for a return to that same theatrical universe. What is the best-known song on Bat Out Of Hell II? I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) is the defining hit, a long-form power ballad that brought Meat Loaf back to global pop visibility. Why does the album feel so different from much 1993 rock? Where much early-1990s rock prized rawness or understatement, this album chose orchestral scale, narrative melodrama and oversized choruses without apology.