** 1/2
Meat Loaf,"Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell"
MCA Records.
Mr. Loaf may look less meaty these days, but there's still a lot of cheese in his diet. "Hell II" attempts to re-create the shameless theatrical juvenilia that was 1977's "Bat Out of Hell," one of rock's grandest guilty pleasures. And there are crafty glimmers here of what made that vinyl behemoth such gloriously adolescent fun. But the pleasure is a lot guiltier this time; there may be a cap on how many years rockers can credibly elevate teenhood to godhood, even with tongue in cheek. To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, you can't go to hell again.
