CODA

"Coda" is the afterthought album when the Zeppelin crashed into the tower and burned up in a fireball. The travesty of "Presence" set the ball rolling towards a break up, followed by horrendous "In Through the Out Door", and then John Bonham's death sealed it in stone. The band had nothing left to give and the great drummer's death rocked their world and he simply couldn't be replaced. Some bright spark decided to release all the tracks that were unreleased from past recording sessions as a posthumous gift to the fans, after all the bootlegs were being unearthed in large quantities so there was obvious interest in the group, and there you have the creation of "Coda". It is Led Zeppelin's worst album with very little to salvage even for the diehard ZepHeads.

There are moments that are up to the excellent Zep standard, as usual, namely 'Walter's Walk', that trudges along with a killer riff and pounding drums, the way they should sound, over present and dominant. Well, at least they drown out the poor vocal technique of Plant drivelling the non-sensical lyrics.

'I Can't Quit You Baby' is back to brilliance as the Zeps move into the dominant blues landscape, a searing performance by Page who makes his guitar cry hot tears. LZ were masters of this genre and when they are released to improvised blues jamming there were none better.

However you have to trudge through tedious songs to get to them. When I say tedious there is none worse than the Elvis inspired ditties such as Darlene, a must to avoid. I know some ZepHeads will state LZ can not do wrong but there is no room for fanboyism here, folks. A lot of this album smells and it smells very bad indeed like the rotting corpse of prog that was stinking during 1982 when this was released to the adoring public.

Also 'Bonzo's Montreux', has a clever title but little else. Okay, it is Bonham banging the living suitcase out of his kit and I guess that has merit, you have to hand it to the man, he knew how to slam those cans, but he does this every concert. Having said that it is one of the lone highlights on "Coda" so worth seeking out.

Anyway this is an album designed for completists, and of course it is coming from arguably the most influential and indisputable rock gods themselves. It has a couple of decent tracks so deserves at least 2 stars. The mighty Led Zeppelin were capable of so much better, and if you want to hear the best you need to turn to the first 4 albums; sheer brilliance.