Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| The Guardian | link |
| The Independent | link |
| NeuFutur | link |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | link |
The album debuted at #8 on the Billboard 200 and sold about 81,000 copies in its opening week, his best since Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell. However, it slipped to #60 after three weeks. The album also reached #3 in the UK charts, but quickly fell off.
Q gave the album a positive review, calling it "the second-best album to bear the 'Bat' name", and saying that Child did an 'impressive recreation of Steinman's Andrew Lloyd Webber-on-steroids approach', while the album was "overblown, frequently ridiculous and largely devoid of irony." They were unimpressed with the title track, suggesting that 'whoever decided it would be a good idea for Meat Loaf to tackle nu metal... should be tarred and feathered." Q did, however, praise the "operatic" vocals and May's "fabulously hysterical guitar" on the track "Bad for Good". The Village Voice named it as 'Album of the Year This Week', calling it "absurdist, righteous majesty".
Some reviews lamented Steinman's absence. According to Allmusic, "this Bat is quite obviously a patchwork, pieced together from things borrowed and recreated, never quite gelling the way either of the previous Bats did." They criticized "The Monster Is Loose" as a "disarming, a grindingly metallic riff-rocker that sits very uncomfortably next to Steinman's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", and Child as "a professional who is playing a game without bothering to learn the rules." On the other hand, the review commended Meat Loaf's voice: he sings "his heart out as he valiantly tries to make this Bat a worthy successor to the originals."
Read more about this topic: Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)