Chuck Schuldiner Project

Monday, December 20, 2010

Houses of the Holy-Led Zeppelin

 So now that its a little later in the day I'm covering more music. And now its Led Zep! I am covering the Zeppelin album that features some of my favorite songs in particular the track Over the Hills and Far Away the first truly 'hard' song that I am learning on guitar. This album marked a new beginning for Zeppelin, featuring a lot of new production techniques to make the music “fatter” and stronger. The guitar work is spectacular as always, the bass actually gets a chance to shine, the drums are awesome as usual and Robert Plant belts out lyrics that boggle the mind in the poetry and power inherent in all of them.
This song explodes out of the speakers with the Zeppelin classic The Song Remains the Same. The guitar parts on this song are basically impossible to replicate on your own. Jimmy Page simply has so much technical skill. That applies for most of the album. There are some insane solos that most guitarists can't even imagine playing unless they've been going at it for 10+ years. Then there are some intense riffs, for example in The Ocean. The wall of sound produced by Page in both his guitar work and actual production techniques boggles the mind (get the pun?). The drums are powerful and loud as usual. On this album the bass gets a few good riffs in in the Song Remains the Same among other songs. Something new to Zeppelin on this album is the addition of keyboards. The 2 main tracks these are heard on are No Quarter and The Rain Song.
Robert Plant's lyrics are amazing. On this album the lyrics are less mystical as on previous albums. The Ocean is a love song dedicated to the fans, Over the Hills and Far Away is another love song. The Song Remains the Same is about a dream that Robert Plant once had. Plant's voice is spectacular as usual and just belts out the lyrics on loud and fast tracks like The Song Remains the Same and the caresses the ears of the listener in slower tracks or slower parts of tracks like in Over the Hills and Far Away or the Rain Song. There is nothing to criticize in Plant's voice, it can honestly do anything.
Overall this is an amazing album featuring great guitar parts and showing off the best voice in rock and roll (except maybe like Freddy Mercury). Zeppelin does it all here, even reggae! Admittedly the reggae songs were not great but still the concept is there (The Crunge and D'yer Mak'r). This is an album that is both loud and soft, it experiments with all sorts of cool sounds that make Led Zeppelin the band that they are. With spectacular solos, amazing drums, bass and even the occasional keyboard the members of Led Zeppelin convey themselves as beautiful rock gods. You get the sense of the twisting and shaking of Plant as he sings and the gyrations of Page's body as he jams away on the guitar. This is an awesome album that I would recommend to anybody.
OVERALL 9.5/10
Houses of the Holy

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