Chuck Schuldiner Project

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Presence-Led Zeppelin

Okay, right so today we're going to cover Led Zeppelin's album “Presence” I feel that this makes it onto a metal blog for one song. The longest song in Zep discography, Achilles Last Stand. This is the most metal moment of a band that would never admit to being metal. But in truth you can not hear Achilles Last Stand and say that it is not metal. I like the rest of this album too but the other songs on this album do not have the same power. Admittedly this album is pretty amazing on it's own due to the fact that Robert Plant had recently suffered a terrible injury in a car accident and was on crutches at the time singing from both an armchair and a stool. The fact that they even made an album with such a key member so injured is truly amazing on its own, and how the album comes through so nicely. It's just like... wow. Your lead singer almost died in a car accident but you just accept that and stay strong. That shows the power of a truly awesome and indefatigable rock and roll spirit, its just amazing!
This album has both harder/metal tracks like Achilles Last Stand which is in fact Jimmy Page's (read; the best guitarist ever) favorite song. There are no light and acoustic songs as found on earlier Zep albums, instead we have all distorted guitars and powerful riffs. There are no 'legendary' riffs here like on Black Dog or The Ocean but this album still very much holds its own up against other Led Zep albums. There are some really spectacular guitar bits from Page, especially in the solos. Bonham as always shows he is one of the best drummers of all time with an amazing ability to really just explode after keeping a quiet tone for most of the song. Jones who has said “I just want to lay down a nice bass line” manages to do exactly that and with impressive skill. It is not spectacular but he does his job perfectly.
The lyrics are amazing and show a bit of maturing on the part of Led Zep. In particular Plant who writes the majority of the lyrics. The rest of the music is on average harder than any other Zep album they had yet released. This is probably the most metal Led Zeppelin album. I like it a lot and it feels really full and is just a joy to listen too. I would choose this album over any other Led Zep album asides from Led Zeppelin I, II, or III (I really love those).
Overall this is a pretty hard album that comes out really nicely and with a lot of power and incredible Jimmy Page solos. It is amazing it can be so good especially after the injury of Plant but this album shows a lot inner strength on their parts as there is no real weakness in the voice of Plant except that he can not quite reach those extremely high notes. This album is the most metal Led Zeppelin gets and it all sounds great. There is of course the highlight of the album Achilles Last Stand which is good enough on its own to compensate if the rest of the album sucked. But it did not suck in fact it rocked quite hard.
OVERALL 9/10
Presence

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