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On this episode, we take a look at the fifth album by arguably THE band of the 1970s: Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy.   

After Led Zeppelin’s monster success with their fourth LP (Zeppelin IV, ZOSO, etc.), the band felt uncertain about how to follow up such a successful album. That success also gave the band a sense of artistic freedom that found them in a more experimental mood, departing from their heavy blues sound and embracing acoustic instruments, synthesizers, and a favorite instrument here at the This Is Vinyl Tap:  the mellotron.   

Released in 1973, Houses of the Holy, named for what the band dubbed their concert venues, is the first Led Zeppelin album with a name not associated with the band’s moniker.  While the lyrics still read like bad Tolkien and Coleridge,  the band's performance for the most part is sublime. The vocals are more restrained and the instrumentation is both complicated and subtle. Houses of the Holy is an album full of some of their more well-known hits (“the Ocean,” “D'Yer Mak'er,” “Over the Hills and Far Away”) and the album that cements their reputation as one of the biggest bands of the 70s.

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