A singer and actor (he drove the bus in Spiceworld but has also appeared in decent movies) who is good on chat shows, Meat Loaf remains an eccentric American the British have taken to their hearts. Back at home an overweight man who likes shouting does not stand out.

But despite Michael Aday’s many talents, think of Meat and you think of Bat out of Hell, the 1977 album that stayed in the charts for a decade. While Phil Spector famously made “little symphonies for the kids”, Meat and his mentor, the songwriter Jim Steinman, made little operas. Taking Springsteen’s storytelling to extremes, their confection chimed perfectly with knowing pastiches such as Grease and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (in which Meat Loaf is cooked and eaten).

In 1991 the follow-up sold only half as many copies (a mere 18 million). But the third album to bear the title doesn’t feature Steinman at all. Seven of the 13 songs are his, but few of them are new. Instead, Meat has enlisted some of pop’s cleverest hacks. Desmond Child, Holly Knight and Diane Warren are all experts in crafting songs that you hate yourself for humming.

The original Bat modelled itself on early rock’n’roll, but at times Bat III becomes a tribute to 1980s big hair balladry. The extraordinarily titled Blind as a Bat (“Your love is blind . . .”) at least has a big stolid chorus, oddly reminiscent of Oasis. Cry Over Me is a good, if dated, power ballad. Best of all is the rowdy, funky If it Ain’t Broke Break it.

Less effective are the concessions to (relative) modernity. Land of the Pigs is a heavy-handed stab at industrial rock and the opening The Monster is Loose is nu-metal (remember nu-metal?) that is so plain that one fears Meat might start rapping. By the time you reach Seize the Night, featuring a children’s choir chanting in Latin, and the painful punning of The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be, a duet with the American belter Jennifer Hudson, some Meat fatigue is inevitable.

Yet on the whole it works. The choruses are catchy and the arrangements are appropriately excessive. It will cheer those stuck in traffic jams for up to 80 minutes. What did you expect? Subtlety?