The band called this the “guitar album.” Jimmy Page said there was a definite “presence” there. It was almost titled Obelisk<\/i> after the black object on the front cover.<\/p>\n
Such trivia obscures what nobody wants to say: this album just isn’t as good as everybody wanted it to be. How can anyone follow up IV, Houses of the Holy <\/i>and Physical Graffiti<\/i>? What this disc shows is the beginning of the end, the sound of a band disintegrating as they suffered through various addictions and personal tragedies.<\/p>\n
That’s not to say there aren’t some brilliant moments here. It’s just that the mundane ones are too frequent to ignore, and that has never happened before. I don’t think “Royal Orleans” or “Hots On For Nowhere” would be caught dead on Led Zeppelin II<\/i>, and it sounds like anybody could have written “Candy Store Rock.”\u00a0 <\/p>\n
But this is worthwhile for its one truly great song, “Achilles’ Last Stand.” An epic with Greek overtones that also seems a band biography, the song truly defines rock epic, ebbing and flowing with thundering drums, multiple riffs and a racing bassline. Robert Plant sang his parts from a wheelchair, proving gods are mortal after all, but you would never know it from the power he puts forth; his final note, held for a good five seconds, sends chills up my spine still.<\/p>\n
“For Your Life” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” are solid rock songs that get by more on attitude than rhythm; “Life” is a particularly decadent tune perfectly in line with Zep’s mental status around this time.<\/p>\n
The experience ends with “Tea For One,” a 10-minute deathly slow blues crawl that plods along ominously before ending on a solitary power chord. It has great guitar solos, a wonderful Plant performance, yet just crawls in the mud for three minutes too long. Maybe trimming that and putting on one of the outtakes that wound up on Coda<\/i> would have enhanced this disc, I don’t know. <\/p>\n
It’s a wonder it turned out as well as it did given the circumstances surrounding its recording. Presence<\/i> is still worthy to be considered a Hammer of the Gods recording, but it showed the gods were mortal, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":27143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5700],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-38484","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-led-zeppelin","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38484"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}