Yesterday I got Led Zeppelin IV, I didn't have particularly high expectations for it, which is good, otherwise I think I would've been a little disappointed.
First off, the production sucks, flat out sucks, in numerous songs the guitar drowns out the vocal and makes Robert Plant's voice damn near indecipherable. On "When the levee breaks" it sounds like the first recording I ever made in my garage with an ancient tape recorder, not to mention the dull plodding beat gets irritable even before the vocals kick in. Robert Plant's orgasmic moans get tiresome early on, as in two minutes into "Black Dog".
That's some of the bad, now some of the good, I like "Black Dog" even with that typical repetetive Zeppelinesque song structure. I don't like the solo but its a catchy tune. "Rock In Roll" is just a flat out good song. "The Battle of Evermore" is a slower bit that has a certain foggy mystical epic sound to it. "Stairway to Heaven" well, what's to be said that hasn't already been said? An incredible song. The rest of the album is so-so for me, "Going to California" is pretty good and suffers from the previously mentioned production woes, although I thought it would be longer.
All in all a fairly decent album, worth the price of admission.

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