Hosts: Neil & Chris

Welcome to another episode of Riffology - the podcast where two mates dissect the albums that shaped music history. This week, Neil and Chris tackle Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album "Led Zeppelin IV", a record that turned mysterious runes, stairwell drum sounds and an eight-minute epic into the template for what a rock album could be.

The hosts dig into "Black Dog" and its brain-bending timing, the folk–to–hard rock build of "Stairway To Heaven", and the cavernous groove of "When The Levee Breaks" with its legendary stairwell drum sound. Along the way they unpick John Bonham’s feel, John Paul Jones’s recorder parts that many assumed were Mellotron, and how Page’s production keeps a relatively thin, era-appropriate mix feeling massive and dynamic.

True to Riffology form, expect delightful detours into:

"Led Zeppelin IV" is more than just the album with "Stairway To Heaven" on it. The hosts argue that it captures a band at a rare crossroads: studio-schooled yet rule-free, commercially enormous yet still willing to release a record without their name on the cover. Its blend of hard rock, folk and blues, plus Page's production experiments at Headley Grange, helped rewrite what rock albums could sound like and how seriously they could be treated as art.

Perfect for: Listeners who know the big hits but have never really sat with the whole album, younger rock fans curious why their heroes worship Zep, and anyone ready to drop the "overplayed" baggage and hear "Stairway" like it’s 1971 again.