PRESENCE

The difficult personal circumstances the band members were going through, with Robert Plant recovering from a serious car accident in Greece and both Jimmy Page and John Bonham in a tough battle with their addictions, cast a shadow over Led Zeppelin's near future. With no touring on the horizon and the urge to do something rather than fall into stagnation, the quartet decided that the best way to deal with the moment was to return to the recording studio, and the result was 'Presence' (1976), their seventh album, a work that took less than three weeks to complete.

Devoid of big production and frills (no keyboards, no acoustic elements), and focused on the most basic rock principles, 'Presence' travels an uneven path combining the brilliance of 'Achilles Last Stand' and its mythological references to the Trojan Achilles in a great guitar demonstration by Page, the best track by far on the album, the dense and choppy melodies of 'For Your Life' and 'Nobody's Fault but Mine', and the bluesy 'Tea for One', a heartfelt reflection by Plant with obvious similarities to 'Since I've Been Loving You' from 'Led Zeppelin III' sustained by Bonham's great percussive work in slow motion mode, with lesser tracks such as the insipid Funky airs of the burlesque 'Royal Orleans' and the nostalgic 'Hots On for Nowhere', or the monotonous and dull rockabilly of 'Candy Store Rock'.

It tasted like so little for such a great band, so little that one of the elements that attracted more attention than the music was the strange black object on the album cover and on the internal graphic packaging... The band's decline was giving its first warning sign.

2.5/3 stars