Review: Meat Loaf, Casca De Carne Tour, Castle Howard

9:23am Saturday 12th July 2008

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It is more than half-an-hour into his self-indulgent set and, as the rain starts to spit again, Meat Loaf has just addressed the audience for the first time.

“Oh, tee-totallers in England, **** yourselves,” he rages.

Is this an act, this aggression, this strutting and pointing and ignoring the hits in favour of What About Love and Bad For Good?

At last, a familiar song – Dead Ringer For Love, sung with Meat Loaf by now in sideways baseball cap and Cheers-checked shirt.

But a backing singer takes the next lead and onward he goes to another non-hit, while there is still no spectacle in front of the giant bison with angry eyes that forms the backdrop.

An hour gone, and the aggression has still not subsided as Meat Loaf cusses at the criticism of his lack of interaction with the audience at previous shows on this tour.

“Well, **** that, I am here to rock ‘n’ roll,” he exhorts.

And about time too, as Paradise By The Dashboard finally releases the Bat, Meat Loaf now in a wig to evoke his bygone era.

He never stops moving, alas like his pitch in I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), the song saved by Patricia Russo’s sparring.

This night was not so much Bat Out Of Hell as bad attitude, amid meagre rations of Meat Loaf.

No wonder people streamed away before the end.