Mad as Hell

Arriving hot on the heels of 2010’s highly conceptual Hang Cool Teddy Bear, Hell in a Handbasket feels like an intimate affair but that assessment is relative. Coming from any other artist, Hell in a Handbasket would sound overblown but for Meat Loaf, it’s relatively reflective, containing thunder in its production but lacking melodrama in its composition. Despite the strategic deployment of “hell” in its title, this album has nothing to do with the three previous Bat Out of Hell albums, including 2006’s Jim Steinman-less The Monster Is Loose, but it has Meat Loaf's signature everything-plus-two-kitchen-sinks approach, sometimes stretching past the point of parody as when he brings in his fellow Celebrity Apprentice contestants John Rich, Lil Jon, and Mark McGrath in for the nonsensical cluster-duet “Stand in the Storm.”

Like any Ryan Adams album, Love Is Hell comes with a back-story, one that is carefully calculated to construct the enfant terrible's self-myth. Love Is Hell was intended to be the official follow-up to 2001's Gold – the album that was not a collection of demos (that was 2002's Demolition), or the recorded-but-shelved albums 48 Hours or The Suicide Handbook, or even his alleged song-by-song cover of the Strokes' Is This It…

Anyone hoping that Hank Williams III's "Hellbilly" metal band Assjack would finally make it onto one of his albums is still out of luck, but Hank III's third solo effort Straight to Hell comes close to getting their no-quarter spirit onto plastic, if not their sound. Taking the no-frills hard-country sound of 2002's Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' as a starting point, Straight to Hell pumps a good bit more darkness into the mix; mostly recorded at home on a digital portastudio, Straight to Hell begins with a sample of the Louvin Brothers' "Satan Is Real" interrupted by a burst of demonic laughter, which then segues into the title tune, a testimony to a life of cheap thrills and dangerous living that sounds like a classic string band rounding the corners at 90-miles-an-hour with empty bottles of bourbon propping open the windows….

After about a decade of silence by the band with Schmier not in the lineup, Destruction's main vocalist/bass guitarist is back! This was of course taking place in 2000. Destruction just wasn't the same without him. His unique vocals meshed so well with the Destruction of the old. Good to have him return, especially with this 2000 release declaring war when it comes to thrash metal, Destruction's divine genre…