IN THROUGH THE OUT DOOR

Even by the band's own account, this was an oddity. John Paul Jones had a bunch of cool keyboards to play with, Jimmy Page was hooked on heroin, and John Bonham was losing his battle with addiction. With half the members of the band contributing significantly less than on previous albums, the resultant album was dominated by Jones' attempts to incorporate keys into the Led Zeppelin sound.

Whilst he earns points for trying, at the end of the day it just doesn't work - not the way he tries to do it anyway. It certainly doesn't help that the usual Page guitar magic is greatly diminished this time around, or that the keyboard sounds themselves have dated poorly compared even to earlier synthesisers. (Compare any track on here to Sabbath's Sabbra Cadabra and tell me the synthesiser sound isn't superior on the Sabs' track, despite the fact that it was recorded half a decade prior to this and despite the great advances in keyboard technology that had ensued since.)

Furthermore, the compositions are weak this time around, and don't exactly sound like Zeppelin. The most heartfelt song on the album is probably All My Love - which is, famously, Robert Plant's tribute to his son who had sadly died between the recording of Presence and the making of this album. It's pretty enough, but rather lifeless and repetitive - but it's still probably the best song on the album because it's the only one on which any of the participants really seem to have their heart in it. Plant acknowledges that he wasn't exactly in the mood to rock out at the time - who would be? - but it doesn't seem as though any of his bandmates were much interested in rocking out either.

And when all four core participants aren't really interested in making a Led Zeppelin album, what's the point of making one?