What's the best Led Zeppelin album?

[Custard]

Just listening to III for the first time on the vinyls, and I might have to go for this one, as it's bloody brilliant. Not a massive fan of Roy Harper at the end, mind

The debut is near perfect for me also, and is so tight and focused.

But come on, what's the best Led Zep record then?

[phantom_power]

The Best of Led Zeppelin, Volume 2

[daf]

Houses of the Holy

Mainly for the 12-string on 'The Song Remains The Same' & Old John Paul Jones & Ringo's lengthy organ workout on 'No Quarter'.

[idunnosomename]

I think you could genuinely argue a case for any of them except Out Door and Coda. Which is quite unusual for a band.

What are the flaws?
I - just heavy blooze innit
II - more of the same?
III - No one like hats off. Oh and fuckin squeaky drum pedal
IV - Uh, Four Sticks? Bonham loses the beat in Misty Mountain Hop
Houses - THE FUCKING CRUNGE AND D'YER MAKER (though would never skip them)
Graffiti - rocknroll jam filler on disc 2 bit of an anticlimax.
Presence - Candy Store Rock is shit. Achilles does a mighty bit of lifting.

I mean I think it's IV overall. Or untitled if you must you fucking nerd

[rue the polywhirl]

How The West Was Won>IV>Physical Graffiti>I>II>Houses Of The Holy>III>In Through The Out Door>Presence>Coda>Greta Van Fleet

[the science eel]

FOUR is the absolute best

THREE probably next

then whatever

[Egyptian Feast]

I like the three in the middle best: IV, Houses and Graffiti. Less plagiarism, more variety.

[kngen]

If you removed D'yer Maker and The Crunge from existence (and I wish we could) HOTH would be their career high point (No Quarter, Over the Hills and Far Away, The Rain Song, The Ocean, I mean FFS!!!) . III is def a contender though. After a good year of wearing my tape of II into the ground as a teen, III was revelatory. Some incredible songs on there.

Never understood why Physical Graffiti is held in such high regard. Yes, there's Kashmir and In My Time of Dying, but way too many loooong bar-room blues workouts. Really is an odds-and-sods album, despite how it was presented to the world.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Never understood why Physical Graffiti is held in such high regard. Yes, there's Kashmir and In My Time of Dying, but way too many loooong bar-room blues workouts. Really is an odds-and-sods album, despite how it was presented to the world.

Ten Years Gone is their best original ballad and In The Light narrowly beats No Quarter as their best progressive number.  Them, plus Kashmir, In My Time And Dying and The Rover gives you a record that's like Presence, but twice as good. I do like the R&B jams, especially Black Country Woman, its the kind of thing a lot of their earlier records could have used.

Sick Again is absolutely repulsive in sound and lyrical content, the nonce equivalent of the How I Did It book from Young Frankenstein, but musically I can't deny it.

Low points: Down by the Seaside and Night Flight can fuck off forever. Led Zeppelin trying to do an Exile On Mainstreet song is about as lame as 70s record can be. The exact chemical opposite of a Flaming Groovies song

Physical Graffiti is my favourite, II least favourite not counting Coda.

[Egyptian Feast]

Never understood why Physical Graffiti is held in such high regard. Yes, there's Kashmir and In My Time of Dying, but way too many loooong bar-room blues workouts. Really is an odds-and-sods album, despite how it was presented to the world.

I rarely used to get beyond the first record, but I've really got into the second half recently, especially the slow burners on side three - 'In The Light', 'Down By The Seaside', 'Ten Years Gone' have all become favourites in the last few weeks. Side 4 does feel a bit more 'odds and sods' but 'Night Flight' is lovely.

[idunnosomename]

Boogie with Stu and Black Country Woman are a bit simplistic but charming in their own way. Don't think there's anything weak about the rest at all. The Wanton Song in particular is just such a quintessentially Zepp song.

Yeah I always thought Sick Again was a bit uncomfortable but even worse now I know it's just a full on nonce boast.

Fun thing to think about, if you dropped Bron-your-Aur (not that you'd want to), the album would fit on one CD.

[Ferris]

John Paul Jones & Ringo's lengthy organ workout

Steady on.

4 then 3 then 2 then 1, then Houses of the Holy, then everything else, then quite a large gap, then Coda and In Through the Out Door.

Happy to have helped.

[Johnboy]

Houses of the Holy

[kalowski]

First five for me. Would include HOTH but as mentioned fucking Crunge and D'Yer Mak'er.
I think today it's LZ3 but as Eel says it's LZ4 isn't it? Or maybe 2.

[idunnosomename]

IV is just one of those classic albums that's so classic you barely need to listen to it anymore. but I think if you balance composition, performance, recording, mixing: it's the best. Houses is arguably more fun though.

I'm glad we have Presence for how electric guitar-based it ended up because of the circumstances, even if it is not really that good objectively on the whole. for a nerd like me who likes to look into how heavy metal got started (lol) there's a fair bit in Achilles that is massively influential on the big power metal epic via Rainbow and Iron Maiden.

Graffiti was of course partly made up of bits of earlier sessions (Houses, IV and III) to augment their Headley Grange recordings that were well over an LP length. Though The Rover, initially recorded in 72 and overdubbed in 74, is one of my fav songs, and certainly not an odd or a sod.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Imagining that the outtakes that made it onto PG were "bonus tracks" from the albums they were record for, Houses would stomp IV.

I don't know the hows and whys of what made the cut, but I can't get my head around dropping the title track and The Rover from Houses. Or that Down by the fucking Seaside was recorded at the same time as all the rock god monuments of IV. After shaking the foundations of reality with When the Levee Breaks and Black Dog, Jimmy Page turns his pedal to DEAF UFO CUNT and Plants goes ooooh what the little fishies saaay

[idunnosomename]

i mean gotta hand it to them for the sheer idea of dropping the title track and putting on the next album instead. couldnt get away with it these days. just like you couldnt write a song about fucking under-16s.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

track list blackboard for Houses:

song that sums up everythere we're about as a band
reggae parody
the title track
viking prog

I like the houses title track. Its no great shakes but its nice they could write a hooky pop song if they wanted, and the lead sound is weirdly glassy and Chairs Missing-ish. Maybe it'd have sounded like a lot of nothing on Houses but PG needed a "fun" song at exactly the point it comes on.

[the science eel]

II is easy to listen to because the best (the only good?) three tracks come one after the other.

Coda has this which is absolutely SUPREME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3XpvxdlhAA

for that alone it beats Presence and whatever the other one after it was called

[badaids]

III is the best. It's got the fewest weak tunes on it. And It's got On The Tiles on it.

[idunnosomename]

"I'm so glad I'm livin'-STOP-gonna tell the world that I am"

such a riff-fest. Megadeth covered it in 2007. it's interesting for how being characterised as the laid-back acoustic one III does have the Viking metal overture up front.

[Shaky]

Can I shock you? I really like D'yer Mak'er.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

If Dyer Mak'er and The Crunge were instrumentals, I think they'd be spoken about very differently. They're tight as fuck but the vocals just make it seem like Zep think those kinds of music are jokes. Plant does a lot better on Trampled Underfoot, not wonderful soul vocals or anything but a lot better on a Stevie steal than where's the confounded bridge.

They've been sampled a lot for a reason.

[Head Gardener]

I - III - BBC Sessions - II - IV - SRTS - PG - C - HOTH - P

[iamcoop]

Don't wanna thread derail but it's mad how Page is still worshipped despite clearly being an absolute nonce of the highest calibre.

(Oh and Physical Graffiti isn't their best but it's their most fun and the one I play more than the others)

[idunnosomename]

WHERE'S THAT CONFOUNDED BRIDGE

[LynnBenfield69]

All Zep albums suffer from blooz rock bloat so it stands to reason that PG would have twice as much of it as a double album. That said, there's not a single skippable track on the first two sides and you've got In the Light, Ten Years Gone and Wanton Song on sides 3/4. Monster of an album.

Does anyone ever need to hear Whole Lotta Love or Stairway ever again?

[McChesney Duntz]

Don't have too much to add to the conversation, but I'm a little surprised that all the HOTH conversation seems to have completely glossed over "Dancing Days," one of my top-five Zeptunes of all time and one which makes up for whatever silly novelty-song flaws the songs on either side of it have.

[Chedney Honks]

All the ones where they big time raped kids and nobody cares.

[Famous Mortimer]

Don't have too much to add to the conversation, but I'm a little surprised that all the HOTH conversation seems to have completely glossed over "Dancing Days," one of my top-five Zeptunes of all time and one which makes up for whatever silly novelty-song flaws the songs on either side of it have.

A belter, indeed. My local classic rock station plays a couple of Zeppelin tunes every day at 5pm (I think it used to be a full hour), and "Dancing Days" is on their regular rotation too.