Led Zeppelin remain one of rock’s defining groups, a band whose crushing sound helped spawn entire genres.

As the new documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin shows, the group’s incredible rise owed much to their unique chemistry, a unified approach to creativity that shone through on one “insane” song in particular.

A 10-minute epic that spliced together hard rock riffs, groundbreaking studio trickery, and the kind of drumming only John Bonham could provide, ‘Achille’s Last Stand’ is an almighty racket.

To singer Robert Plant, it sits close to the apex of Led Zeppelin – a song that is “insane” but also “magnificent”.

Speaking in 2019 on Digging Deep, The Robert Plant Podcast, the frontman led a deep dive into this vastly ambitious piece of rock bombast.

Dubbing it “the music I was so fortunate to be around”, he waxes lyrical about his band mates, and their own special band of rock music.

In a separate interview, guitarist Jimmy Page discussed the song’s interwoven guitar parts: “There must be half a dozen going at once.

I knew that every guitar overdub had to be very important, very strong within itself to identify each section.”

Born from “a desperate time” in their lives, ‘Achilles Last Stand’ became a potent, completely idiosyncratic highlight on their often misunderstood album ‘Presence’.

Robert Plant said on his 2019 podcast: “The melody and the musicality of those three guys in that track is insane. It’s absolutely insane, it’s magnificent.

So magnificent I had a lady friend who I was playing it and it came on in the house loud.

She said: ‘I don’t wanna be left in a room with this on my own’. Because it’s so intense, it’s brilliant.”

A testament to the band’s studio prowess, Led Zeppelin dared to include the song in their live performances – including their epic stand at Knebworth.