HOUSES OF THE HOLY

Both in it's value to progressive fans and in the quality of the songs contained therein, Houses Of The Holy is the most important album in the band's esteemed discography. Here we see Led Zeppelin at their most experimental since III, but without discarding their hard rock, Zeppelin sound as they nearly did on that album.

The album contains only two genuine prog tracks, "No Quarter" and "The Rain Song" both of which are simply fantastic. On these tracks, as well as a majority of the album, we see John Paul Jones trading in the base for the Mellotron and the synthesizer which adds a much welcomed progressive sound to the album, as well as a new depth to the music. The remaining songs resemble I-IV Led Zeppelin more, but all show some experimentation at least at the level of combining different genres with their hard rock, such as funk on "The Crunge" and reggae on "D'yer Maker".

The music easily merits five stars on a normal grading scale, but for the purpose of this website the album will receive 4. Even the category Prog-Related is a stretch for Led Zeppelin's most progressive of albums.