Black Stars/Sofrito

2. Led Zeppelin- Presence

The folks who argue that Led Zeppelin doesn’t count as “heavy metal” make the point that Zep was too stylistically diverse for the category, but in reality it’s because those folks haven’t given this staggeringly cacophonous album the attention that it deserves. Framed by the twin tragedies of Robert Plant’s car accident (he recorded the vocals for Presence from a wheelchair) and his 5-year old son’s unexpected death, and recorded and mixed in less than three weeks, Zeppelin stripped their music down to the raw essence of the band: Jimmy Page left his acoustic guitars behind at Boleskine House and Plant banished the faeries to the moors before coming to the studio. What is left is an extended colloquy between Page’s army of guitars and John Bonham polyrhythmic traps on the topic of relentlessness. Whereas Bonham used to mess around with the 3rd and 4th beats of a measure, here he is all in front (which is why for the first time Zep’s once-per-album James Brown homage doesn’t sound like a parody). Bonham’s drums are the lead instrument for “Achilles’ Last Stand”—pay attention to how he sets the pattern of the song during the push-pull intro, goes across that rhythm during the first part of Page’s guitar solo, and then brings those two elements together as the song winds down. Or listen to how he takes control of the harmonica interlude in “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”. Bonham’s ride-the-Furies onslaught showcased on Presence became a defining feature of New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands, and it’s not even the coolest thing going on here. Because that would be Jimmy Page’s quasi-Nordic guitar work. Recording all of the overdubs in one 18-hour session (how did those guys do that kind of thing back then?), Page creates a trebly, chiming and churning guitar sound that, when the ensemble sections all come together, sounds like a black metal Basie band. Presence may not be the best Zep album ever (that would be Physical Graffiti), but by toning down the chutzpah and stripping away the filler, it is their most singularly metal moment.