Release and Critical Reaction
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| BBC Music | Favourable |
| Blender | |
| Billboard | Favourable |
| Robert Christgau | A |
| Entertainment Weekly | A+ |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | Favourable |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| Spin | Favourable |
In the lead-up to the album's release, a series of teaser advertisements depicting each symbol was placed in the music press.
The album was a massive instant seller. It entered the UK chart at No. 1 and stayed on the chart for 62 weeks. In the US it stayed on the charts longer than any other Led Zeppelin album and became the biggest selling album in the US not to top the charts (peaking at #2).
"Ultimately," writes Lewis, "the fourth Zeppelin album would be the most durable seller in their catalogue and the most impressive critical and commercial success of their career". Music critic Robert Christgau has dubbed it "a genre masterpiece".
Read more about this topic: Led Zeppelin IV
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release, critical and/or reaction:
“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)
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“It would be easy ... to regard the whole of world 3 as timeless, as Plato suggested of his world of Forms or Ideas.... I propose a different view—one which, I have found, is surprisingly fruitful. I regard world 3 as being essentially the product of the human mind.... More precisely, I regard the world 3 of problems, theories, and critical arguments as one of the results of the evolution of human language, and as acting back on this evolution.”
—Karl Popper (1902–1994)
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)