Artist: Led Zeppelin

Format: Vinyl

Released: 06/03/2014

Manufacturer: Atlantic

Tracklist: Immigrant Song, The, Hats Off To (Roy) Harper, Friends, Celebration Day, Since I've Been Loving You, Out on the Tiles, Gallows Pole, Tangerine, That's the Way, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp

LED ZEPPELIN III is the sound of rock's brash enfants terrible beginning to mature. While the take-no-prisoners blues-rock of the first two albums is still prominent in the band's tool box, other implements are beginning to appear. The delicate acoustic whispers that would run through much of ZEPPELIN IV have their folk/blues antecedents here (the lambent "That's the Way," the earthy "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp"), the results of the band's creative encampment in a woodland dwelling. At the same time, the heavier tracks are unprecedented in their ferocious swagger. Robert Plant's bone-chilling battle cry and the band's savage riffing on "The Immigrant Song" do full justice to the song's Viking imagery, and it's easy to believe that the "hammer of the gods" Plant sings about is being swung straight in your direction.