The singer unleashes a cry ferocious enough to lead soldiers into war. The guitarist squeezes out a solo so tight it could wring his instrument's neck. And the drums bear down like a 10-ton truck ready to flatten anybody who can't keep up the violent pace.
Welcome to the blood sport that was live Led Zeppelin in its prime. On Tuesday, the world will get a lengthy reminder of the band's power when its surviving members release the mother of all concert packages.
Covering the full history of Zeppelin's flight, the project features eight hours of previously unheard live material: five hours on a state-of-the-art DVD (called, funnily enough, Led Zeppelin DVD), three hours more on a CD of wholly distinct recordings (under the title How the West Was Won).
"All I can say," says singer Robert Plant, 54, "is that it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're young and foolish."
Not to mention fearless.
When the band first appeared, in 1968, Led Zeppelin obliterated the prevailing template for rock. It overhauled the previous 60 years of blues history, refigured the potential weight of rock and ultimately created a catalogue that spawned a range of subgenres, from speed metal to the power ballad.
Still, what strikes a viewer first when watching vintage Zep is the band's sheer punch.
For a surprising amount of these eight hours, the band is dead-on. The DVD focuses on three periods in Zeppelin's history - a 1970 concert from London's Royal Albert Hall, a 1975 Los Angeles show and a 1979 performance at England's Knebworth Festival, which turned out to be its last show. The band broke up in 1980 following the drug-related death of drummer John Bonham.
Meanwhile, the CD chronicles two L.A.-area shows from 1972, before the release of Houses of the Holy.
The entire project had its genesis in the 1970 material. Just over a year ago, 58-year-old guitarist-producer Jimmy Page was thinking about the paucity of visual documentation of his storied band.
Zeppelin had rarely appeared on television, since it refused to mime to its records, which was usually necessary at that time.
Page rummaged through the Albert Hall footage and discovered it was in brittle shape, and that much of what had been filmed was missing from his own collection.
So, he put the word out to bootleggers that the band was on the hunt for the footage, and would pay top dollar for it. He wound up buying back nearly the entire performance.
