A Little dive into Meaty compilations

[Frying Bat]

I like to take a look into the Meat compilations that have been released trough out the decades, out of the many i selected the 8 most interesting and will venture my opinion about them. Since i do not own (all) of the albums i will not go into technical details but talk about cover art and song choices.
For all the albums i have been looking at the original European releases.

Feel free to give your own comment or useful information
there will a link to Discogs for every album.

A HITS OUT OF HELL (1984)
https://www.discogs.com/release/1035...ts-Out-Of-Hell

The first official ML compilation, the cover art looks great imo. It looks like they really did the trouble to create a sinister atmosphere with what looks like real attributes.

The song choices for that time are great, off course there wasn't much to pick at that time, one could argue that "If you really want to" and "Peel out" are missing since they where also released as singles (they could be absent due to playtime issues)

Overall i think if you look at this album from the perspective of the time it was released this is a very solid and (nearly) complete compilation.

B BACK FROM HELL (1993)
https://www.discogs.com/master/36023...e-Very-Best-Of

This album i have myself and together with the 2 Bat albums this compilation f
feeded my interest into Meat's music.

The art work looks great, a nice drawing in the style of Bat and Dead Ringer, the albums also comes with an information booklet that has several pictures and text in German.

The choices of the songs are interesting, for a pre Bat 2 collection that covers the "Hits" From the first albums, this one is nearly complete, they only seem to forget to put a track from Midnight on it. (they later made that up with part 2)

This album is very good compilation and at the time of release it made for a very good introduction in Meat Loaf for the people wanted to look Beyond the Bat albums. It does however have 2 flaws (one is mentioned above) and the other is that some tracks have been edited.


C BACK FROM HELL AGAIN (1994)
https://www.discogs.com/release/1727...y-Best-Of-Vol2

The follow up to the Back from hell collection and one do own myself as well.
It has the same art work as the previous one, only this one is blue instead of read.

The song choices are kinda odd. Here we see (hit) singles together with album cuts and even some Jim Steinman performances in it. The albums claims to have rare tracks but i guess that only counts for track 2 and 14.

This album has 4/5 (cult) classics on it but mostly it's overall an ok selection of songs.

D. HEAVEN CAN WAIT - BEST BALLADS (1996)
https://www.discogs.com/master/72801...eat-Loaf-Vol-1

A nice but not to special cover art.

Here we see an interesting choices of songs, it features (nearly) all the ballads of the pre Bat II period and 2 Steinman performances put in it.

I think for what the album is claiming this is an excellent compilation. the only let down is that the cover claims this is Part one but until this day there is no sign of Part 2.

E VERY BEST OF 2cd (199
https://www.discogs.com/master/22535...t-Of-Meat-Loaf

A really great cover art in Bat style.
at the time of release it was the only album that focused on the Pre and Post Bat II period.

The song choices are excellent. The (then) new tracks are good but i have to be in the mood to listen to them. The only downside i have with this album, is that one choose for a running time of below 60 minutes for each disc, while i would prefere 70+ minutes so a couple more songs would be added.

Still this is an excellent compilation.

F HEAVEN CAN WAIT - BEST OF
https://www.discogs.com/master/61581...it-The-Best-Of

This album has an ok cover art i think it's not bad but nothing special to.

Here the selection of songs is also strange. Remarkable here with the exception of "I'd lied for you..." is the absent of his 3 greatest hits of all time.
this is a mixture of Live track, Singles and Album cuts. (can someone mention from what period the live songs are from?)

This collection of song is interesting but i think i would like to see a more balanced choice of tracks.

G PIECE OF THE ACTION - BEST OF
https://www.discogs.com/master/10448...on-The-Best-Of

a picture of a rather good looking Meat Loaf probably at the BFIS period.

with 2 discs this could have been a good Post Bat II collection but instead they choose the first 9/10 years of his (album) recording career. For that period this might be the most complete overview out there.

Personally i would trade some songs for others but for people interested in the Career of the Loaf during the 80's this is an excellent compilation.

H PLAYLIST BEST OF
https://www.discogs.com/master/10670...st-Of-Meatloaf

a little bit of a strange cover, a picture of Meat Loaf who looks like he just dried his hair with an electric dryer.

AFAIK this is the last official compilation and this one is like some albums i mentioned early a little bit funny.
It has al his hits from 77 till about 96 but then it skips over 3 albums and ends with a track from HIAHB ignoring CHSB, BOOH3 and HCTB.
(if someone has info on the live track feel free to inform me)

The album is good i think but it would be better if they made it a double album so they could also put in songs from the ignored albums.

[Evil One]

One note about Hits Out Of Hell is that all the songs have the left channel one decibel louder than the right. This is then repeated on many of the cheapy compilations released afterwards as they simply copied the tracks from this album instead of going back to the original source material.

[Danny L]

https://www.discogs.com/release/8285...More-Hell-Hits

This always looked like an interesting one to me - practically all the Aristarchus tracks in a Bat 2 inspired cover