Mothership-- a collection of 24 of Led Zeppelin's "greatest hits," remastered and selected by the band's three remaining members (Page, as well as Robert Plant and John Paul Jones)-- might be conceptually flawed, but it's hard to argue against songs as indisputably great as these. Mothership is not the first time Page has participated in the distillation of his own work: In 1990, a decade after John Bonham downed his last shot of vodka, Page curated an eponymous boxset (known, in fan parlance, as Crop Circles) which saw their eight-album discography distilled to four perfect CDs. And in 2002, Atlantic released Early Days and Latter Days: Volumes 1 and 2 (each previously available as a single purchase, in 1999 and 2000, respectively), a Page-condoned collection of 23 tracks which awesomely featured all four members of Led Zeppelin on the cover, dressed in giant American space suits and perched casually in front of an illustrated moonscape. Early Days and Latter Days has a tracklist similar to Mothership (the latter adds "D'yer Mak'er", "Over the Hills and Far Away", "Heartbreaker", and "Ramble On", but loses "Ten Years Gone", "What Is and What Should Never Be", and "The Battle of Evermore") so, clearly, the idea of Led Zeppelin's greatest hits is contentious even for the band itself.

Fans will probably argue over Led Zeppelin's selections-- omitting "What Is and What Should Never Be" feels unforgivable-- and it seems obvious that Page, Plant, and Jones were striving hard to represent every last phase of their career: Some work from the band's crucial 1969-1975 era is sacrificed for late-career tokens like the comparably-mediocre "In The Evening" (itself a curious selection, given the relative popularity of In Through the Out Door's "Fool in the Rain", which was the band's last release to make the pop single charts). Still, content-critiquing aside, the remastering on Mothership is no small achievement, and it sounds revelatory on even the shittiest stereos. Check Bonham's pitter-pattering in the verses of "Ramble On", or the still-intact fuzz at the top of "Immigrant Song", or the tiny percussive "fwwpts" on "D'yer Mak'er", or the restored outro to "Over the Hills and Far Away". Twist your volume knob heavenward and embrace Plant's inescapable geekiness, yelping about Gollum and Mordor; chug booze and air-drum with John Bonham: Led Zeppelin sound as tremendous in 2007 as they did in 1972.

Mothership offers no bonus content or previously unreleased material. It serves, mainly, as an introduction for those (presumably out of classic rock radio range) still unfamiliar with the band. Longtime fans will find little of use here, although anyone who spends a couple hours with Mothership will find themselves duly reminded that Led Zeppelin are quite possibly the finest rock band of all time.

People may have been clamouring for this stuff but, as with the recent publication of Kurt’s personal diaries, it should be questioned if many of the songs on ‘With The Lights Out’ should ever have been allowed into the public domain at all. Entire swathes of ‘With The Lights Out’ are so personal, it’s like peering into Kurt’s private journals and selfishly ripping out a page for yourself. Sometimes it’s fascinating, but over the course of more than three hours and 81 songs it occasionally feels like you’re discovering secrets better left untold.

The release last year of the ‘lost’ ‘You Know You’re Right’ was something of a red herring for those who may think that the vaults are heaving with quality unreleased Nirvana songs. ‘With The Lights Out’ features numerous different mixes and alternative versions of already famous tracks, but in terms of actual new material it’s relatively slim pickings.

But what there is here is brilliant. Highlights include ‘Old Age’, an outtake from the ‘Nevermind’ sessions which Kurt then gave to Courtney, who recorded it with Hole. Then there’s the psychedelic ‘Do Re Mi’ (known in some circles as ‘Me And My IV’), a pretty acoustic demo reminiscent of something from The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ – a song which would have been recorded and released on an EP for their aborted appearance on Lollapalooza in 1994. But, of course, the band never made the tour.

What is revealed, though, is that the way Kurt wrote songs never changed. From the earliest rehearsals in 1988, when Nirvana were playing in bassist Krist Novoselic’s mum’s house, through to ‘Do Re Mi’ (committed to tape just weeks before he killed himself), Kurt worked through his ideas and lyrics on a simple acoustic guitar, often recording on anything he found nearby – boombox, tape recorder or four-track. It didn’t matter that the guitar was flat or maybe even missing a string. Listening now, ten years later, to this DIY approach, it’s charming to think that these sketches became ‘Rape Me’, ‘Pennyroyal Tea’, ‘All Apologies’ and ‘Sliver’. But it’s often frustrating because what could have been a thrilling document of the best songwriter since John Lennon is masked behind hiss and noise.

CD1 deals with the band around the release of ‘Bleach’, when they were little more than Led Zeppelin wannabes, trying to find a unique voice and struggling against an inability to break free of their remote location, to find a good drummer, or even somewhere permanent to rehearse. There are two Zeppelin covers, in fact, on the first disc, a pretty faithful run-through of ‘Heartbreaker’ and a workmanlike ‘Moby Dick’. There are three Leadbelly songs recorded at a 1989 studio session in Seattle (predating ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’ on ‘MTV Unplugged...’ by four years) and live versions of some of the best moments from ‘Bleach’: ‘Downer’ and ‘Floyd The Barber’. In truth, a lot of what’s on CD1 sets foundations for what’s to follow. Despite the fact that many of the tracks are swamped in feedback, even in the late-’80s Cobain, try as he might, couldn’t mask his love of bands like The Beatles – it comes through in the early demos of ‘Polly’ and ‘About A Girl’.

But as the decade turned, something changed. If on the early demos Cobain wanted to celebrate his heroes by covering their songs, as Nirvana developed Kurt found the confidence to embrace melody, take a song he liked and perform it in his own style. And in doing so he found his voice.

CD2 features different mixes of some of the songs which took Nirvana to the top of the US album charts and shook rock music to its core. There’s an embryonic demo of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, plus alternative mixes of ‘Stay Away’ (renamed as ‘Pay To Play’), ‘Breed’ and ‘Lithium’. It’s Nirvana at their most mainstream and sugar-coated; polished pop songs that sound as fresh today as they did in 1991. But somewhere in the middle of these sits an acoustic demo. It’s of ‘Dumb’. And it’s the first real hint that Kurt’s struggling to come to terms with his success and is crippled by his addiction to heroin. It opens the door to the most harrowing moments on the entire compilation.

By late 1992 and into 1993 it’s obvious that Kurt doesn’t want to be a pop star anymore, and it’s eating away into his songwriting. CD3 opens with two different versions of ‘Rape Me’, the first on acoustic guitar, the latter with the full band. On the acoustic version there’s a child, presumably his daughter Frances Bean, screaming in the background. As Kurt sings, the screaming doesn’t die down; if anything, it gets worse. It’s impossible to say if it’s there intentionally to give the song more power, but it’s not like it’s needed.

That’s followed with a nine-minute version of ‘Scentless Apprentice’. Even against the backdrop of one of the most uncompromising albums ever, the finished version can hardly be described as one of the more radio-friendly moments on ‘In Utero’, but this is something else. Grohl came up with the drums and riff and you can almost hear him teaching them what to do. Three minutes in, there’s a wall of feedback; by four it starts to take shape. Kurt doesn’t have any lyrics; he’s searching for a melody but none comes. Six minutes in, he’s screaming his lungs out and the band just get louder and louder. It’s awesome, one of the best things on the box-set.

Then comes ‘Heart Shaped Box’. Again, completely different from the unit-shifter released as the first single from ‘In Utero’, this comes from the same sessions in Rio as ‘The Other Improv’. The guitar solo in the chorus is replaced with a wall of feedback, a metaphor for the reaction against the monster Kurt perceived he’d created. CD3 ends with an undated solo demo of ‘All Apologies’ so bleak to makes the version on ‘MTV Unplugged...’ sound like ‘Hey Ya!’ .

The DVD adds more insight, with brilliant rehearsal and live footage, from the ropey fuzz of Shocking Blue’s ‘Love Buzz’ up to the Rio studio’s strangely touching recording of insipid ’70s ballad ‘Seasons In The Sun’.

Ten years on, ‘With The Lights Out’ is the ideal last statement. With three studio albums, an unplugged, a live album, a greatest hits and now this, those close to Kurt and Nirvana have handled what must have been years of horrific decisions with true dignity. But now, there’s nothing of any quality left. Kurt wasn’t alive long enough for those around him to keep returning to the vaults time after time and finding lost gems.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for answers, you’ll get more questions. What was that reference to a death certificate about? Anything at all? Did he see himself as following in the footsteps of the bluesmen like Leadbelly? Or continuing a rock lineage that snakes back to The Beatles? Or both? And if you’re after better versions of classic songs, think again. But as a humanising, comprehensive and often heartbreaking document of a man who, in five years, changed the face of music, almost by accident, it’s essential.
Read more at http://www.nme.com/reviews/7562#ik8lZOcJP0KKdgtA.99

But with that, another problem has developed — upholding a brand. And get this straight: No band has ever sounded like Alice in Chains. Yes, we remember Days of the New; consider yourselves lucky you don't remember the plainly offensive Dust for Life. But somehow, Nirvana has avoided blame for Puddle of Mudd, while AIC totem Layne Staley supposedly died for Godsmack's sins. These Seattle knuckle-draggers are credited with setting the bar for nü-grunge's extra-crunchy guitar tone, but no band has or could replace guitarist and co-writer Jerry Cantrell's seasick harmonies, drummer Sean Kinney's off-beats, or Staley's wailing, no-walls weirdness. Where is Godsmack's talkbox solo over acoustic guitar or Seether's Claymation video, Three Days Grace's seven-minute admission that they're a goddamn "Sludge Factory"?

Commercially successful as Alice in Chains ended up, Staley didn't know how to romanticize, and he completely failed to craft a persona. If he pleaded, "You can't understand a user's mind" on 1992's mega-selling Dirt, it's because he lived as he died — ten years later, in the throes of a horrible addiction. He broadcasted live and direct from rock bottom. It was in no way a sustainable business model — just an uncommon grip on perversity matched by a band that performed the miracle of a Lennon/McCartney partnership amid hole-in-the-earth ugliness. You wouldn't tell a documentarian to repeat Grizzly Man, either.

From Staley's first available song ("We Die Young") to his last ("Died"), it seems safe to assume that his demons were real, despite occasional protests like "Grind," where he bitched at the press "not to plan my funeral 'fore the body dies." No one wanted him to live up to his musical horrors, not least his band, who decided to carry on 14 years after his death with a new singer.

And so, on 2009's Black Gives Way to Blue, frontman William DuVall inhabited another man's body of work as cautiously as he could, without playing his predecessor as too ugly or too soft, debuting the radio-unfriendly, seven-minute single "A Looking in View" only as a token of weirdness to ensure that nobody claimed they were in it for the money. Except for the occasional name-diluting ballad like "Your Decision," the album was a crash dummy for how well fans would take to DuVall, who was mostly hidden inside Cantrell's familiar harmonies. Yet its only great song was its poppiest: "Check My Brain" juxtaposed a ridiculous chorus about California with all rights and oh yeahs against a quintessential Cantrell riff, just one heavy note bent to mutation.

That album now feels like a practice session for the better but flatter The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, which has nothing as good as "Check My Brain" or as dull as "Your Decision," and genuinely wants to say something about the human condition in a post-Tumblr world, even if it's just, "Jesus don't like a queer / No problem with faith, just fear." This isn't inconsistent with Staley's legacy, since a hyphen would greatly reroute a sarcastic quip like "Clear all your sins / Get born again," and it's definite progress for a band that earlier gave us "Queen of the Rodeo" ("I ain't no queer / Go fuck a steer"). The album title comes from the idea of Satan planting fossil evidence to discourage the faithful.

Musically, we get one too-brief talkbox solo on "Lab Monkey," Cantrell's signature noise on "Pretty Done" and "Stone" (as warmly welcome as anything you'll get from Thurston Moore these days), and lots of nostalgia-triggering crunch-and-moan. "Breath on a Window" has a pretty, proggy bridge that could be at home on Unwound's Leaves Turn Inside You. But several tracks, like "Hung on a Hook" and "Low Ceiling," never break out of their creeping familiarity. The best moments feel left up to chance: "Hollow" has an epic, unsingable hook that only Cantrell and a twisted duet partner could properly nurture, while the woozy centerpiece "Lab Monkey" squeezes fresh juice from old riffs and harmonies.

Nothing sounds new, and yet it has no parallel in the old Alice catalog, because they were just so much weirder than we remember. 1990 debut Facelift had more Guns N' Roses than Mudhoney in it; Dirt had radio power but plenty of frightening, buried-alive difficult moments, while 1994's acoustic detour Jar of Flies played with haunted-house blues and folk. The squelchy trip of the following year's Alice in Chains simply sounded broadcast from hell itself, with a title like "Head Creeps" that wasn't even the creepiest thing on it (hiya, eight minutes of "Frogs"!), while the requisite Unplugged session got "Sludge Factory," but not "Frogs," on MTV.

As for Dinosaurs, the most interesting outlier here is somewhat of a pop song, an acoustic glam-AC/DC stomp titled "Voices." Calling it experimental would misrepresent its barren lyrical palette — "Everybody listen / Voices in my head" — but it's the first thing Alice II have done that gives DuVall his own vocal identity. It's safe to say that Staley wouldn't have done those post-chorus power-pop vocal runs. Small potatoes yeah, for a meat-and-potatoes band. But the Devil put Godsmack here to make us forget the meat.

Musically, the overall blueprint hasn’t changed much during the years for Black Label Society, so one has to wonder, how can these guys jump from something so generic (if still ok) asShot To Hell to something so engaging as Order Of The Black. The answer: energy. On Order Of The Black, the band sounds electrified. The rhythms are infectious, the overall tempo is great, the grooves are gripping, and the tone is heavy. All this result in a heavy metal album that sounds both fun and badass – just like Black Label Society should always be.

What's also excellent on Order Of The Black, besides the music itself, is the production. One could argue that Black Label Society has always had solid production, but on Order Of The Black it really stands out. Almost every facet of the music is brought out admirably: the drums are pounding, the main riffs gritty enough, the solos just in the right tone (plus meshing well with the background), and Wylde's howled vocals are just as much in the forefront as the guitars and drums, thus not overshadowing the instrumentation in any way, nor being indecipherable. And even though the bass, sad but true, isn’t heard during most of the album, it doesn’t detract from the overall quality production, especially when taking into consideration that inaudible bass isn’t a rarity in metal nowadays.

The only dislikable thing on the album is the inclusion of two generic ballads, "Darkest Days" and "Time Waits For No One". Black Label Society can compose solid rock ballads, with "Shallow Grave" being a good example on this very release, but the aforementioned two sound both out of place and boring. Then again, they do have a slightly redeemable factor, too. Since the other tracks here sound energetic and fun, the cuts that follow those ballads sound twice as refreshing, making them extra enjoyable. So in that regard, the two ballads can be excused.

Black Label Society have started this decade with a bang, just like they did 10 years ago when they released Stronger Than Death. Order Of The Black is the band’s heaviest, most energetic, and most cohesive record since 1919 Eternal, being of the same quality that Black Label Society's first three albums were. The boys truly are back, baby.