After the successes of their first four albums, Led Zeppelin decided to keep the musical flame burning on with this album, Houses Of The Holy. Despite its rather questionable album cover and the different album name from what came before, let’s have a listen to this album, and see how it sounds.

We begin with The Song Remains The Same with its chiming guitar intro and excellent musicianship. It is very catchy and listenable, with some awesome and intricate playing from Led Zeppelin. A terrific and enjoyable listen. It goes quickly into a decent song section with Robert Plant’s amazing singing here. Strange lyrics are here, before the band launch into more fantastic jam sounding material. Robert Plant then sings about the universality of this song, making this a thoroughly great listen. Very catchy and top, all the way through, although it is over five minutes long. Great start to this album.

Following is The Rain Song which begins with some lovely acoustic guitar playing. An awesome and enjoyable listen, Robert Plant’s singing matches this piece, being more subtle than usual. After some time, a beautiful Mellotron string section enters to add some beauty to this piece. It is a beautiful and majestic listen from Led Zeppelin. A gentle listening experience, this is very much a reminder of the material on Led Zeppelin III. Some strange lyrics are here, and this piece is rather long, but never boring. In the second half, it bursts into a loud Rock groove that is thoroughly enjoyable. A great and positive sounding piece. The outro is very simple and beautiful here. A fine listen.

Over The Hills And Far Away begins with some top acoustic guitar playing here. Before long, some extra overdubs of acoustic guitars enter this piece. This is well played and very catchy. Robert Plant begins singing over the top before this piece gets kicking into a wonderful Classic Rock groove. This is a great listen and is very upbeat and catchy. A wonderful listen with a rather crazy sounding guitar solo here, this is awesome. A great listen from start to finish, it fades out with an organ melody playing the main melody of this song. Cool.

The Crunge begins with some proto The Chemical Brothers sounding beats before bass and melodies enter. Robert Plant sings about a lover who he has in mind. A fine listening experience, this is very good and is a great devotional sort of song about a lover next door. A great and superb listen, and being rather short for Led Zeppelin, at three minutes long.

Next is Dancing Days which sounds a lot like a Country/Blues sort of thing. A weird sort of song, with Robert Plant singing about hippie ideals and similar things. This is a great listen, although perhaps a little unusual for Led Zeppelin. An energetic and upbeat piece that sounds really fun. Great to hear, a fine listen. It sounds very catchy and danceable, nice to hear this for a Led Zeppelin tune.

Following is D’yer Mak’er which begins with loud drum beats, before going into a weird Reggae sounding song. This is rather an oddity in the back catalogue of Led Zeppelin and sounds loud and thunderous. The combination of bass guitar and drums here is really fantastic here and is very much syncopated here. The chorus in particular is awesome and thunderous Led Zeppelin. There is a weird guitar solo here. This is an excellent Pop/Rock piece about heartbreak. The outro is different.

No Quarter comes next, with its watery keyboard melody that sounds odd. This continues on for a large part of the intro to this song before the rest of the band enter. Some awesome fuzz guitar enters, and we are in Rock heaven. It goes back to the keyboard melody before Robert Plant sings into a semi distorted microphone, and this song gets kicking along. The piano here is really beautiful in the midsection and is probably a better idea than a guitar solo here. Shortly afterwards, a clean and bluesy guitar solo enters and we are taken away to a different place. A very strange piece, but inspired by the Lord Of The Rings books, this is quite a good song. Rather lengthy though, this could have been cut down in length somewhat.

The Ocean is the last song here and is considerably lighter than the previous song. It has an awesome guitar chord progression in the verses here, and this is a welcome change from the song before it. Fun, energetic and exciting, this is a great song to finish the album with. A great piece that sounds both powerful and intense. This actually has a reference to pedophilia here, which is disgusting. Towards the end, the band go into a crazy Rock jam with many Classic Rock sounds and finishes this album off nicely. Great stuff.

This is no doubt a great album. Sure, it is not the best Led Zeppelin album out there, but still, it sounds really amazing, even today. Fans should check out deluxe remastered versions of this album with extra goodies on it as well.

Wacky.

9/10