12 Most Overlooked Meat Loaf Songs From Every Album
8. Blind Before I Stop (1986) - Execution Day
The otherwise heartily forgettable Blind Before I Stop mostly saw Meat Loaf delivering very basic 1980s-style euro-metal anthems: long on synths and squalling guitars, short of the theatre you'd expect from the big man. The lead single, Rock N' Roll Mercenaries, inexplicably paired Meat Loaf with John Parr: why anyone thought it was a good idea to draw a comparison with Parr, who sang in the same register as Meat Loaf but with a far greater range, is a mystery.
The album opener, then, is as good as it gets - and luckily Execution Day delivers where the rest of the record doesn't, a dramatic number about a man on death row. The lyric - alternating between bitterness and regret - perfectly complements the music, full of the kind of light and shade that showcases both Meat Loaf's histrionic vocals and (for better or worse) that production sound.
Where those sub-par riffs and squealing keyboards cut in, Execution Day falters - but in the slower, more emotional sections, with the swelling backing vocals reaching almost choral levels of harmony, it reaches the same heights of blood, sweat and thunder that his audiences had come to expect from Meat Loaf - probably the reason why it was tacked onto the front of the album, to lull everyone into a false sense of security.