According to the book, Zep took a while to make this record. John Paul Jones had been sick and the band had several stop-start attempts at recording, but couldn't seem to hold onto a studio for long enough to get things done.
Once they got going though, they were unstoppable, producing a double LP that explores all sorts of musical avenues, with the slide guitar-laden epic "In my time of dying" apparently nutted out more or less live in the studio. There's the hard funk of "Trampled under foot", the gargantuan "Kashmir" written after Page and Plant holidayed in Morocco.
There are proggy tendencies, light folk, there's sunny west-coast pop (meets country) in "Down by the seaside", old style rock n roll in "Boogie with Stu".
The guy who reviewed it in the book referred to it as Zep's last high point. Even if you agree with that though, considering they only had 2 more albums (if you don't count 'Coda') after this, that's not really signalling a huge period of decline.
As a side note: 'graffiti' is a word I find stupidly difficult to remember how to spell.
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