LIVE FROM LONDON

This was a concert that Pallas recorded for the Live From London television series in 1985 - a year when the show would feature a number of other neo-prog bands, including Twelfth Night (captured on their own Live From London release) and IQ (the recording being released as the Living Proof live album). It captures the band when they were just about to knuckle down to record their second album, The Wedge, which would prove to be the last flowering of their original run, the group sliding thereafter into a hiatus which lasted for around a decade.

Here, though, new frontman Alan Reed proves equally adept at the group's newer material (some Wedge pieces yet to be ironed out in the studio and selections from the Knightmoves EP which preceded this) and older stuff originally recorded with Euan Lowson, with the band deftly integrating their commercial-leaning and prog-leaning sides somewhat better than they had on The Sentinel. Alan gives every impression of being fully committed to what the band is doing, and if Pallas would falter later on, perhaps it was more down to EMI's chronic mishandling of their promotion than anything the band themselves lacked.