Back in the 1970s, in lunchrooms across the land, kids told the tale of a band who’d sold their souls to the devil. The band was Led Zeppelin, and though ­the rumor was bogus, it was also revealing, because it reflect­ed the mythic stature of this ferocious and fabulously successful band. They surpassed the Rolling Stones as the decade’s most popular group by crafting some of the crunchiest and most evocative rock music ever made. But there was also something preternatural about them, even a little spooky.

Just look at these fellows circa 1974. Robert Plant flounces around the stage like a horny faun, and when he’s not pillaging old blues records, he sings about Vikings and The Lord of the Rings. Jimmy Page has occult symbols stitched to his pants and plays guitar with a ­violin bow and a mastery that borders on mystery. John Bonham is sometimes called “the Beast,” a description of the way he pounds drums and booze and occasionally people. The demure bassist and ace arranger John Paul Jones seems like a nice guy, the Zeppo Marx of the bunch.

What generated the myth, and what you can still hear, is Zeppelin’s unparalleled power: the power to seduce and enchant, to play louder and longer and looser than any other chart­toppers. Some scoffers thought this music sounded crude. Today it sounds prophetic: big, heavy beats, freak folk, atmospheric production, blistering attack.

They emerged in 1968 and quit in 1980, after Bonham, drunk, drowned in his own vomit. Mothership gives the peaks of that journey, providing a straightforward chronological sampling of the band’s evolution through eight studio albums. The restless pop-punk drive of “Communication Breakdown” returns a few years later as the myth-metal of “Immigrant Song.” The glowering Norse-rock of “No Quarter,” which lays down a template for a million metal bands to come, heads toward the East for the cosmic “Kashmir.”

Zeppelin was the ultimate album band, so their collections always feel cramped. But like Christmas, they keep coming. (Because it includes the Tolkienesque “Battle of Evermore,” 2002’s Early Days & Latter Days may even be more satisfying than Mothership.)

Mothership is remastered, or re-remastered, or maybe re-re-re­remastered. What this means mostly is that you can hear John Bonham as if he moved his drum kit into your brain. Bonham may not be rock’s most sophisticated or energetic drummer, but he is certainly its heaviest, and one of its funkiest. Just listen to the deep groove of “Trampled Under Foot” or the oft­sampled “When the Levee Breaks.” He’s also the highlight of the spruced-up DVD/CD soundtrack to the concert film The Song Remains the Same. Though occasionally incendiary, the 1973 performance is sloppy and subpar, and the extra tracks aren’t half as good as the material on the live collection How the West Was Won. But Bonham carries the day: a primeval booty monster at the top of the heap, climbing toward heaven.

Download: “Whole Lotta Love,” “When the Levee Breaks,” “Kashmir”