Sent from the land of the ice and snow (Heston in Middlesex), Jimmy Page's decision to break the chains of being a muzak session musician to form the eight-legged rock behemoth known to the globe as Led Zeppelin remains one of rock's most significant moments. Taking the tradition of folk, the sexiness of the blues, finding the greatest rhythm section of all time and adding a heaviness to the guitar that lifted the whole concept to new heights, Page's phenomenal songwriting and effortless cool is the reason you'll probably see someone in a Led Zeppelin shirt every day for the rest of your life.

No band is inculpable when it comes to bad material, and even Led Zeppelin have a few turkeys in their canon. However, to concentrate on that side of things would be ridiculous. At their best, Led Zeppelin created bodies of work that challenged themselves and their audience, never played it safe, and always shunned commercialism in the name of what their creative instincts told them to execute. Including the band's live albums but leaving out their compilations, this is every official Led Zeppelin album, ranked.

13 Coda

Somber Collection Of Outtakes Is Bundled Together

Coming two years after the ing of John Bonham, Coda is a curated send-off for Led Zeppelin. Pieced together following the band's decision to split up forever, Coda is a collection of leftovers and outtakes from various sessions. The end result is interesting, but not remotely essential or meeting the band's high standards.

A major criticism of the album is that Coda feels like an undercooked release. When the standards are as high as Page insisted upon throughout the years, this can't help but feel like a dramatic decrease in quality compared to the rest of their career. It feels unfair to even group this with the classics, because it wasn't really crafted by Led Zeppelin as a band. Many fans see Coda as a cash grab or nothing more than a release necessary to fulfill the band's contractual obligations. Even John Bonham's drum solo, "Bonzo's Montreux," manages to be polarizing.

12 The Song Remains The Same

Flat Live Recordings From Their Underwhelming Movie

It might be blasphemy in some quarters, but The Song Remains the Same is one of the biggest regrets in Zeppelin's story. A concert movie, capturing the mystique and marvel of one of rock's most successful, creative, and well-loved bands during their hottest period, should be dazzling, mandatory viewing. In truth, it's fine; functional. It's an interesting look at how Zeppelin wanted to express themselves artistically at that moment, and not capturing the monumental moment in time it could've been.

Producers Eddie Kramer and Jimmy Page rarely steered each other in the wrong direction, but the decision to overdub parts of the live performance is regrettable at best, and unforgivable at worst. Notoriously hit-and-miss in the live environment, the Madison Square Garden performance was also underwhelming. It was a pale imitation of other, much better, Zeppelin live records.

11 In Through The Out Door

Zeppelin Go Out With A Whimper

For a band heralded for their power, Led Zeppelin's final album felt feeble in comparison to their monolithic catalog. In many ways, this was a band that had done it all and have nothing left to prove. The lack of fighting spirit, the enthusiasm that could always be felt in their recorded output was all sorely missing on In Through The Out Door.

In truth, the musical landscape that Led Zeppelin had changed over the course of their career had changed once more. Two years after the filth and fury of punk rock, a wave of American artists like Kiss and Aerosmith that had altered their blueprint, disco and everything else that ushered the late '70s into the early '80s meant Led Zeppelin were beginning to feel archaic to the changing times. It's not even actively bad like Presence, In Through The Out Door is a Zeppelin record that doesn't feel like its heart is ever in it.

10 Celebration Day

Capturing The Magic Of Their One-Off 2007 Show

It still feels like a mirage, but Led Zeppelin came back to own the earth for one night only at London's O2 Arena. Tickets traded hands for around £1,000 outside on a guest list that included Dave Grohl, P!nk, and Juliette Lewis. Jason Bonham filled his father's drumstool, and they dropped the music a couple of steps to ensure Plant could deliver the likes of "For Your Life" and "Rock and Roll" with the required gusto. The mission was accomplished, London was flattened, and Celebration Day captured the whole occasion perfectly.

It's a bittersweet feeling to listen to Celebration Day. The band reformed to pay homage to the man who signed them in the first place, Ahmet Ertegün. Hearing Page deliver his songs with all the magic they were recorded with, fans can be forgiven for listening to this album and wishing this version of Zeppelin had toured. While that day of reckoning remains the unlikeliest of reunions, we will always have the magnificence of "Black Dog" kicking in as the strains of "Ramble On" fade out. Oof.

9 Presence

Tragedy Rains Down On The Cursed Collection

Famously, Presence felt like "what can go wrong, will go wrong" for Led Zeppelin, following on from the success of Physical Graffiti. After years of non-stop touring and living fast and free, Zeppelin were starting to feel removed from their many strengths, including why they started the band in the first place. Something had to give, and that something was a drastic dip in quality that signaled the beginning of the end of the band's hot streak.

"Achilles Last Stand" proved that Zeppelin still had quality in dire circumstances, but Robert Plant recorded the album from a wheelchair after suffering a car accident while holidaying in Greece with his family. Zeppelin disregarded their meticulous nature, recording the whole record in just over 2 weeks, with the recording process being wrapped up in Munich in 18 days total. There are no acoustic songs, no ballads, and no frills. It's rudimentary hard rock, but we'll always have "Achilles Last Stand."

8 The Complete BBC Sessions

Classic TV Performances And More From The Vault

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Long before the Live Lounge gave the BBC a recognized global live music outlet, Led Zeppelin sessions were recorded across a variety of TV shows and live shows for broadcast on the media giant. Across shows such as Tasty Pop Sunday and Rhythm And Blues (alongside when John Peel presented Top Gear), it is the show recorded in Paris Theatre in 1971 that is the pick of the litter on this recording.

When originally released in 1997 on Atlantic, the fanfare for The BBC Sessions came from there finally being new, official Led Zeppelin recordings for fans to chew on. At that point, the sole official live release came in the shape of the compressed and underwhelming soundtrack to The Song Remains the Same. There was to be more good news, as the collection had a third disc added to it in 2016. The Complete BBC Sessions disc would finally appease fans by including the missing, popular version of "Sunshine Woman" that had been traded on the bootleg circuit for years prior.

7 How The West Was Won

The Very Best Of Led Zep Live

The pinnacle of the band's live experience, How The West Was Won captured Zeppelin at their height. Recorded at the band's 1972 California concerts in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Zeppelin were a Learjet flying, rock n' roll excess machine, touring one of the biggest and best rock albums in existence. It's fascinating, even as a historical artifact, let alone taking in the quality of the playing.

There's no way around this though; listeners will struggle if they don't like jamming out. Bonham's legendary solo on "Moby Dick" clocks in at 19 minutes and is the third-longest track on the record, as "Dazed And Confused" and "Whole Lotta Love" clock in at 25 minutes and 23 minutes respectively. It makes this the glitziest and best sounding of all of their live albums, an acquired taste that still feels like mandatory listening.

6 Led Zeppelin

Seeds Are Sewn On Zeppelin's Debut

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It doesn't quite come screeching like a bat out of hell like the debut albums from other legendary bands like Appetite For Destruction or Van Halen, but Led Zeppelin's debut is an ultra-strong beginning for the British upstarts. It was the unforgettable first time that the thunderous thumping of John Bonham, the razor-voiced Robert Plant, the bottomlessly adaptable genius of John Paul Jones, and the maestro Jimmy Page recorded together. It changed the sound of guitar music forever.

To nitpick, there can be arguments that Plant's voice is way too forward in the mix, and the covers of the band's blues influences are less interesting than the band's own compositions. On the positive, Zeppelin's initial quality is on full display, as "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" writes a blueprint for the kind of hard rock epic that Metallica would turn to on "Fade To Black" and countless others would use as the template for their own creativity. Led Zeppelin is not perfect, but it's still fantastic.

5 Led Zeppelin III

Led Zep Split The Jury By Going Folk

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Influenced by a songwriting trip to Wales, Page and Plant fell down a folk rabbit hole on Zeppelin's third outing. In spite of opening with arguably the hardest song in their whole back cata "Immigrant Song," III is a more acoustic-driven album that's about feeling Led Zep's earthy roots. It was largely seen as a misfire upon its release, but time has been far fairer to this collection.

Having been hounded for sounding like plagiarists, III sounds like Zeppelin trying to shut down critics of their folk-leanings and credibility within that realm. Whatever the reason for one of the most musically themed albums in Zeppelin's collection, the shimmering "Tangerine" and "Since I've Been Loving You" are outstanding. However, if there is a problem with III, it's that they accomplished everything they were attempting to a higher standard on "Going To California" on their next release (whomp, whomp).

4 Houses Of The Holy

Despite Success, Zeppelin Refuse To Stay In Their Lane

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Led Zeppelin made a wild stylistic leap after the biggest album of their career, and that is something very few bands have the bravery to do (whether it's what's in their hearts or not). Zeppelin's unwillingness to cater to the public was on full display from the opening throes of the raging, kaleidoscopic "The Song Remains the Same." How you feel about them experimenting with reggae on the ridiculously titled "D'yer Mak'er" is up to your own volition.

In of its direction, Houses always feels more about ambition than popularity. Page's playing on "The Rain Song" is sublime, but it's the orchestration on it that feels like he's refusing to stay in his humbler, more folk-laden box. Only "Over the Hills and Far Away" feels like it's palatable with its predecessor, with the effects-driven shuffle on "Dancing Days" going way out there, and John Paul Jones hinting at his own future greatness on the expansive and stunning "No Quarter."