No name on the cover but the names remain the same

With this 1973 album Led Zeppelin continues to cause trouble by offering an album cover by Hipgnosis with naked blonde children climbing a bunch of rocks without any reference to the title or even the name of the band. The group figured everybody would know about "Houses of the Holy" and insisted on finding new ways of tweaking their noses at the music business beyond producing songs that were way too long for AM Top 40 airplay. There were those of us who were just happy that there was an official name to Led Zep's fifth album after the previous one was known variously as "Led Zeppelin IV," "Runes" and "ZOSO." "House of the Holy" is very similar to that album in that once again there are no length blues tracks as you would find on their first three albums, although we do have John Paul Jones playing with his synthesizer on "No Quarter," which became his signature song.



What we do have are more examples of Led Zep's version of rock 'n' roll where the bass lines and Bonzo's drumming come up big with "The Ocean" (I like the odd little a cappella section) and "Dancing Days," as well as the folk influence on the acoustic beginning to "Over the Hills and Far Away." We even have one of the better examples of Led Zep being cute with "D'yer Mak'er" ("Me wife is going on vacation." "Jamica?" "No, she's going of her own free will...") and the group's first attempt to try to duplicate the success of "Stairway to Heaven" with the lush synthetic strings of "The Rain Song." Actually, I think the opening track, "The Song Remains the Same" is a better effort along those lines, covering much more ground both musically and vocally. You always get the feeling that Jimmy Page is always looking for the perfect song to not only start off an album but to open a concert, which probably makes it ironic that the song they apparently used most often was "Rock and Roll," the second track from their fourth album. Overall, "Houses of the Holy" is probably the best of the second level Led Zeppelin albums