Max Portnoy tackles Led Zeppelin's "In My Time Of Dying" for Drumeo challenge

Max Portnoy stepped into Drumeo’s latest For The First Time challenge with no advance listen, then had to make sense of Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time Of Dying” on the fly. The multi-instrumentalist, known for work with Tallah and Code Orange, was put in the classic Drumeo pressure cooker, hear a drumless track first, sketch a plan, and then commit when the full performance hits. That setup is unforgiving even before the song’s scale comes into view.

“In My Time Of Dying” is not a normal rock exercise. Led Zeppelin released it on Physical Graffiti, which the band’s official discography lists as arriving on February 24, 1975, and the track runs a little over 11 minutes, making it the group’s longest studio cut. The size of the arrangement alone turns the challenge into a stamina test, but the deeper issue is feel. Max is not just chasing the notes, he is trying to decode a sprawling John Bonham performance that has long stood as one of the defining examples of hard-rock drumming.

That is where Drumeo’s format gets interesting for drummers. A song this long leaves nowhere to hide, especially when the groove has to breathe like Bonham’s did, with space, weight, and patience. Max had to react immediately to a track he had never heard, then translate what he was hearing into something playable without the luxury of rehearsal. For drummers who study Zeppelin, that is the real watch list, not flash, but endurance, placement, and the ability to keep the groove feeling enormous while the arrangement keeps moving.

The family angle adds another layer. Max is following in the footsteps of Mike Portnoy, who has also appeared on Drumeo and once challenged his son to learn Dream Theater’s “Honor Thy Father” for a June 13, 2025 feature. That older episode gave the Portnoys a father-son drumming storyline; this new Zeppelin run extends it into classic-rock terrain, where legacy matters just as much as technique.

The song’s own history deepens the assignment. “In My Time Of Dying” began as an older gospel-blues number before Led Zeppelin turned it into a hard-rock epic, so Max was not only taking on Bonham, he was stepping into a song with roots that predated Zeppelin itself. That is what makes the Drumeo clip more than a performance piece. It is a live test of how a modern drummer handles one of the heaviest songs in the catalog, with no warm-up, no roadmap, and a 11-minute legacy waiting at the kit.