The singer the New York Times calls Mr Loaf has released eight studio albums, not counting this one, which will surprise those who thought there had been only two - Bat Out of Hell I and II. So completely has the Bat series dominated the big man's career, it's hard to name anything else he has done - a cameo as a bus driver in the Spice Girls film comes to mind - but those other six albums (including the most recent, Couldn't Have Said it Better in 2002, and Welcome to the Neighbourhood in 1995) are stubbornly unmemorable.  Full text...

All in all i think this album is one of the best he's produced, it has a mixture of songs everyone will enjoy from all ages.   Full text...

The first two Bats were, at heart, collaborative efforts. Both have covers boasting “Songs by Jim Steinman”; unfortunately only seven of Bat Out of Hell III’s fourteen are written by Steinman. Four of these have been performed by other artists and two are salvaged from an aborted Batman musical. For all their bombast and grandeur the previous instalments had a sense of purpose; this is just a collection of songs, some of which are great, some less so.  Full text...

Where's the beef? Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell III offers some tasty bites, but it's not a truly satisfying meal  Full text...

Yet on the whole it works. The choruses are catchy and the arrangements are appropriately excessive. It will cheer those stuck in traffic jams for up to 80 minutes. What did you expect? Subtlety?  Full text...

An epic rock trilogy ends with a warmed-over last supper.  Full text...

Bat III is a thrown-together mix of Steinman scraps -- twenty-year-old songs and pieces from his aborted Batman musical.  Full text...

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".  Full text...

Bat Out of Hell III real ugly  Full text...

This almost feels like a posthumous album, the way it was cobbled together with leftovers and scraps of questionable material. In a way, that's a fitting sentiment, because the Bat Out Of Hell series as we know it is officially dead.   Full text...