THE DREAMS OF MEN

Once I witnessed a Pallas gig in the mid-Eighties, what a mindblowing progrock, so delicious bombastic and loaded with the Mighty Tron sound! After the album The Sentinel the band quickly turned into a kind of hardrock formation, not really my cup of tea and I said goodbey to Pallas. A few years ago I witnessed again a Pallas gig, it was their The Cross & The Crucible tour and I traced some magic of the early years. The special edition The Blinding Darkness (2-CD/1DVD box-set) blew me away and was I was again a Pallas aficionado!

The sound on the nine compositions on this album is in the vein of the The Sentinel-era: often slow and bombastic, lots of Mellotrons, Moog Taurus bass pedals, fiery electric guitar and a powerful and propulsive rhythm-section, especially the Rickenbacker bass guitar from Graeme Murray sounds great and very distinctive, like the inspired vocals from Alan Reed. The most captivating element from the Pallas progrock is the tension between the bombastic pieces and the more mellow interludes, every moment you await to be overblown by sumptuous eruptions featuring majestic Mellotron floods, heavy Moog Taurus bass pedals and fiery electric guitar. Some tracks also contain a church-organ sound but in general the focus is on the splendid electric guitar work, what a outstanding soli, from sensitive to fiery, biting and howling!

To me this album sounds more mature and captivating than their classic The Sentinel, THIS IS A FUTURE CLASSIC!!

By the way, the 2-CD special edition contains on CD-2 no less than 15 interesting re-mixed versions, a jam and outtakes from their latest studio-album, that one is on CD-1.