Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell
| Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell | |||||
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| Studio album by Meat Loaf | |||||
| Released | September 14, 1993 | ||||
| Recorded | 1991–1993 at Ocean Way Recording (LA) and The Power Station (NYC) | ||||
| Genre |
Hard rock Wagnerian rock |
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| Length | 75:38 | ||||
| Label | MCA, Virgin | ||||
| Producer | Jim Steinman | ||||
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| Jim Steinman chronology | |||||
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| Singles from Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell | |||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Kerrang! |  |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | |
Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell is the sixth studio album by Meat Loaf and was written and produced by Jim Steinman. It was released in September 1993, sixteen years after Meat Loaf's first solo album Bat Out of Hell. The album reached number 1 in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Five tracks were released as singles, including "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", which reached number 1 in 28 countries.
The album was released by Virgin Records outside of North America, where it was released by MCA. The third part of the Bat trilogy, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, was released in 2006.
Just like the first album of the trilogy, Bat Out of Hell II was a huge commercial success and sold over 14 million copies worldwide.
In the midst of the success of Bat Out of Hell, desperate for a follow-up, management and the record company put pressure on Steinman to stop touring in order to write a follow-up, provisionally titled Renegade Angel. In a 1981 BBC Rock Hour Special interview, Jim Steinman recalls the writing process.
I started writing what I felt was Bat Out of Hell part 2, definitely like The Godfather part I and part 2, that's how I saw it. I wanted to do a continuation and I wanted to do an album that went even further and that was more extreme, if possible, which a lot of people felt wasn't possible but I just wanted to see if I could make a record that was even more heroic because that's what I thought of it ... Bat Out of Hell to me was ultimately very heroic though it was funny ... and I wanted to do one that to me would be even more heroic and more epic and a little more operatic and passionate.
In a 1993 promotional interview for the album, Steinman reasserts the continuation of the Bat world. "I didn't call it Bat Out of Hell II just to identify with the first record. It really does feel like an extension of that... It was a chance to go back to that world and explore it deeper. It always seemed incomplete because I conceived it like a film, and what would you do without Die Hard 2?" Meat Loaf himself was more succinct. He told an interview at the time, "We called it Bat Out of Hell II 'cos that would help it sell shitloads."
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Wikipedia