Genre: Rock/Pop, Sub-Genre: Hard Rock

Recorded at Headley, Grange, Hampshire, Island Studios, London, England and Sunset Sound, Los Angeles, California.

Led Zeppelin: Jimmy Page (guitar); John Paul Jones (keyboards, synthesizer, bass instrument); John Bonham (drums); Robert Plant.

Additional personnel: Ian Stewart (piano); Sandy Denny (background vocals).

Led Zeppelin's epochal fourth album finds both the band's blues-rock thunder and their gentler, more lyrical side filed down to a razor-sharp point. "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll" aren't just perennial air-guitar anthems; they're the ultimate distillation of the blues-inflected, hard-rock fury the band had already been perfecting for the past three years. Robert Plant's Little Richard-on-amphetamines wail rides perfectly atop the band's strategically directed crunch for maximum impact. "When the Levee Breaks"is a titanic take on the blues, with John Bonham's thunderous drums echoing through the subsequent decades. The folkier, acoustic tracks provide Welcome moments of beauty and respite, and all the elements of the band's sound come together in "Stairway to Heaven," a suite of shifting dynamics that would become the Eiffel Tower of classic-rock radio forevermore.

 

Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.113) - Ranked #66 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "...Towering..."

Rolling Stone (12/23/71, p.63) - "...out of the eight cuts, there isn't one that steps on another's toes, [or] that tries to do too much all at once..." - Lenny Kaye

Spin (p.89) - "[With] whipsaw riffs that treated the blues like ancient runes..."

Q (6/00, p.76) - Ranked #26 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums"

Q (10/94, p.141) - 5 Stars - Indispensable - "...it's...big room ambience still best described by 'When The Levee Breaks'..."

NME (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #56 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.'