10 Perfect Albums That Started Heavy Metal

No one really had to argue about the pedigree behind Led Zeppelin at their inception. Jimmy Page already had an agenda coming out of the Yardbirds, and their debut record already put them on firm territory as one of the most powerful acts coming out of the British blues scene. The blues can only take you so far though, and you could hear Zeppelin inching towards something a bit more intense on their second effort.

While the blues is certainly still here on their versions of Bring It On Home or the Lemon Song, the attitude behind something like Whole Lotta Love is a lot more gritty than it was before, with the echo on Robert Plant's vocals feeling a lot more haunting towards the end of the track. This also marks the first time where they seemed to really show off their talents, from everyone dropping out during Jimmy Page's guitar solo at the end of Heartbreaker or John Bonham tapping into his inner animal on Moby Dick.

Even though there are some by the numbers tracks by Jimmy's standards here like Living Loving Maid, some of the slowburns have a different kind of intensity to them, with tracks like Ramble On being a folk hard rock hybrid talking about Robert Plant being cheated out of a girl by Gollum in the depths of Mordor. This may have been released in 1969, but these songs were practically a preview for what we were going to get in the next decade.