Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell - Reception

Reception

The album was a commercial hit, and has sold more than 25 million copies around the world. It was number one for one week in the US on the Billboard 200, and the UK Albums Chart, and number one in Australia for four weeks. Meat Loaf won a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for "I'd Do Anything for Love".

Despite its huge commercial success, critical reception was mixed. The specialist music press were generally positive. Q magazine proclaimed, "truly this... is the genuine follow-up to the most over-the-top rock album of all time." Like most critics, Q referred to the excesses of Steinman's style, citing the length of the songs (Q says that "Objects..." running for 10 minutes and 12 seconds is "not necessary"). Unlike the original, where the epic loud songs were "offset by the softness of stuff like "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad"... even the ballads are Roman orgies of sound and fury." This, they say, means "the album's probable theme—the crushing effect growing up has on teenage dreams—seems to get lost among the thud and blunder." However, overall, Q is positive, concluding with the sentiment that "Ultimately, Back Into Hell may not trash its predecessor, but as a mad, crunching, stadium rock album, it's probably the best thing of its kind you'll hear this year."

Looking at how "Steinman's old-fashioned teen-dream rock 'n' roll fantasies" fits in with the music culture of 1993, Kerrang! suggests that it wouldn't appeal to "Nirvana and Metallica fans, but there's an older generation of rockers out there who will, quite properly, worship this album." Their four-star review declares that "it is a work of genius, a ready made rock classic and arguably the last word in rock operas." In The Tip Sheet, Jonathan King labelled it a "glorious, splendid album," celebrating Meat Loaf's "operatically gorgeous" voice and Steinman's "superb" songs, arrangements and production. "You'll be blown away. Better still you'll catch yourself openly laughing out loud at times with delight. You know what to expect yet it's constantly better, fresher and brighter than you hope. If they had a Mercury Music Prize for American albums, this would win it hands down."

In a 1999 documentary celebrating the original album, Meat Loaf says that Bat Out of Hell polarizes people: some hate it, and some worship it. The bombast did not meet some critics' approval. As with the first album, Rolling Stone gave the album a mixed review. They call it "harmless, low-octane operatic drivel" with "insufferably long Steinman compositions with equally long names." Non-specialist publications gave the most negative reviews. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram also referred to the length of the songs, in which Steinman "vomits up 75 minutes of endlessly repeated choruses." The newspaper branded it "the worst pop album of 1993." The Des Moines Register thought that the album was "wallowing in excess so gratuitous as to make Michael Bolton, by comparison, seem a master of understatement... Mountains of banshee-like wailing guitars! Thunderous drums! Herniated vocals! Profoundly stupid lyrics! Gack. This isn't pandering to the lowest common denominator—it's lowering the lowest common denominator."

Like the original, retrospective reviews have been appreciative. Allmusic appreciates the bombast and "the pseudo-operatic splendor of Jim Steinman's grandly cinematic songs. Responding to concerns about length and overstatement, they reply, "that's precisely the point of this album, and is also why it works so well. No other rock & roller besides Meat Loaf could pull off the humor and theatricality of Back Into Hell and make it seem real. In that sense, it's a worthy successor to the original."