Immigrant Song

"Immigrant Song" is two minutes and twenty-six seconds of pure kinetic assault, and the shortest distance Led Zeppelin ever traveled between an idea and its execution. It opens with a rising, filtered feedback drone, then Bonham's galloping tom-and-hi-hat pattern locks into Jones's driving bass, and the riff is barely a riff at all — a two-note pounding in F sharp minor that functions as forward motion rather than melody. Plant's opening wail, wordless and air-raid-like, is the most imitated vocal sound in hard rock. The lyric came from a 1970 tour stop in Reykjavík: the land of ice and snow, the midnight sun, hammer of the gods, Valhalla, the Norse conquest imagined from the Viking side rather than the victim's. It is the founding document of every subsequent metal band's mythological posturing, and it is delivered with total commitment and a wink no more than half-visible. Page keeps the guitar tight and dry, no extended solo, no room to breathe. The song's afterlife — sports arenas, Marvel trailers, Thor jokes — has flattened it, but heard as track one on the record, arriving without warning after the tape hiss, it still functions as an announcement that something enormous is coming over the water. Play while running, or while doing anything that requires overriding hesitation.