10 Hard Rock Music Bands That Avoided The Sophomore Slump

So...you've already made one of the best debuts in the history of British music. After Led Zeppelin got the ball rolling on their first outing, it felt like the start of something entirely different, taking the sounds of the British Blues Boom and turning them into massive sounding tunes, with John Bonham bringing in the thunder from behind. If you wanted to top something like that, you needed to go beyond the blues altogether.

Although you can still hear the influences from bluesmen on Led Zeppelin II, this is where Jimmy Page really comes into his own as a riff writer. For any fans looking to get into hard rock, this has you covered for every single aspect of the genre, with one classic riff coming on nearly every single song, like the sleazy sounds of Whole Lotta Love or the acoustic stylings of Ramble On.

Aside from the actual riffs, what gives the record its swagger is Bonzo's drums, always playing slightly behind the beat and giving the songs room to breathe. On almost every song, everyone is operating at the peak of their powers, as Robert Plant adopts his Golden God persona, John Paul Jones fleshes out his arrangements on Thank You, Jimmy laying down some chaos on Heartbreaker, and Bonzo playing the drums until they are pleading for mercy at the end of Moby Dick. If there's anyone that tries to tell you what hard rock could sound like, chances are they're probably describing something that's on this record.