Presence (1976)
1. Achilles Last Stand
2. For Your Life
3. Royal Orleans
4. Nobody's Fault But Mine
5. Candy Store Rock
6. Hots on for Nowhere
7. Tea for One
Perhaps it was inevitable. After six years of near-unbroken brilliance and an unprecedented streak of genre-defining albums, Presence marked the moment when the seemingly invincible began to show signs of strain. Context matters: Robert Plant was recovering from a devastating car crash (he reportedly recorded his vocals from a wheelchair), the band was beset by legal issues, financial pressures, and a growing sense that the golden run might not be infinite. The cracks, audible and otherwise, begin to show here.
Presence is not a disaster. Let’s make that clear. But it is, by Led Zeppelin’s stratospheric standards, a misfire—an album of great weight but questionable lift. At just seven tracks, it is their shortest tracklist, yet somehow it feels their longest. Clocking in at around 44 minutes, much of that time is devoted to extended, meandering jams that seem to lack the precision and inspiration that once flowed effortlessly from the band. One gets the distinct impression of a band straining—at their own mythology, at the limits of energy, at time itself.
It opens with Achilles Last Stand, a ten-minute juggernaut that has its defenders—and rightly so. Bonham is in terrifying form, and Page layers guitar upon guitar in a storm of fury and flash. But even this, arguably the album’s centerpiece, feels oddly repetitive. The opening salvo is thunderous, but one can't shake the feeling that we're hearing the same three minutes recycled three times. The energy is undeniable, but the composition is less so.
Nobody’s Fault But Mine is another polarizing cut. The riff is vicious, Bonham’s drums are a cannonade, and Plant’s stuttering vocal attack (“N-N-N-N-Nobody’s Fault...”) is arresting at first. But again, the piece overstays its welcome. Had it been tightened by a minute or two, it might have packed a more potent punch. Instead, it begins to feel like a very good idea in need of a producer willing to say “stop.”
Elsewhere, things are less defensible. Royal Orleans feels like a glorified jam with lyrics that border on farcical. It's the sort of track that would’ve been left off Coda, let alone a mainline Zeppelin release. Tea for One, meanwhile, attempts the mournful, slow-blues terrain of Since I’ve Been Loving You but lands with a dispiriting thud. At over nine minutes, it’s a slog—an unusually lifeless closer that ends the album not with a bang, but a disinterested shrug. One might be forgiven for nominating it as the weakest track in the entire Zeppelin canon.
And yet, amid the rubble, there are sparks. For Your Life is the hidden gem of the record: slinky, sinister, and unusually contemporary for Zeppelin, it hints at a darker, sleeker sound the band might have explored more deeply had circumstances been different. Hots on for Nowhere is similarly effective, a wiry, rhythmic number with shades of funk and just enough swagger to justify its inclusion.
Is Presence still better than 90% of what was clogging record store shelves in 1976? Probably. Zeppelin, even on a bad day, could out-muscle most of their contemporaries. But for a band that had redefined what rock albums could be—from II to Physical Graffiti—this feels like a rare stumble. The magic isn’t gone, but it’s dimmed. The fire isn’t out, but the coals are cooling. And as a portrait of a band caught between myth and mortality, Presence is as revealing as it is frustrating.
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