Release and Critical Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | B |
| Entertainment Weekly | C+ |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | Mixed |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
The album was released on 31 March 1976, having been delayed by the completion of the album sleeve. In Britain it attained one of the highest ever advance orders, shipping gold on the day of release. It peaked at #1 on the US Billboard Pop Albums chart, leaping from #24 inside two weeks. However, this album has not been one of the band's biggest sellers, and it received lukewarm reviews upon its release. In late 1976 the album was also overshadowed by the release of the band's movie and soundtrack The Song Remains the Same.
According to Dave Lewis, "The direct, hard-hitting nature of the seven recordings failed to connect with a fan base more accustomed to the diversity and experimental edge of their previous work. Page later acknowledged that, because the album conveys a sense of urgency resulting from the troubled circumstances in which it was recorded, "it's not an easy album for a lot of people to access ... t's not an easy album for a lot of people to listen to."
However, despite its initially subdued reception, Lewis considers that Presence
has become a much underrated element of their catalogue. The basic drums-bass-guitars formula may lack the diversity of previous Zeppelin sets, but in terms of sheer energy, 'Presence' packs a considerable punch, and has emerged as one of their most potent performances... This album is also a triumph for Jimmy Page. His production and dominant guitar style has an urgency and passion that reflects the troubled period that the group were going through at the time. 'Presence' is Led Zeppelin with their backs against the wall.
Music journalist Stephen Davis (author of Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods) gave Presence a mixed review in Rolling Stone when it was released but revised his opinion over the years, declaring Presence his favourite Led Zeppelin album and the best on-record studio representation of the band's elemental sound.
Read more about this topic: Presence (album)
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release, critical and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)