THE SENTINEL

Pallas arrived as one of the bands amongst the early eighties British Neo Prog movement. Hailing from Scotland they were one of the major players in the scene alongside the likes of Marillion and IQ. Obviously influenced by the seventies giants like Yes and Genesis but also displaying Popier sensibilities on their shorter tracks giving their sound a commercial edge at least some of the time. They were lucky enough to secure the services of Yes Producer Eddie Offord and the sound overall is pretty good.

It would appear the album has grown in size somewhat since I bought my original vinyl version (from which I do my review) which had six tracks in total. The cd version has added a few tracks and the running order has been changed too.

The first two tracks on my version are Eyes in the Night (Arrive Alive) and Cut and Run and both display the more commercial side of the band. Both are solid enough though not spectacular. In fact it's the longer tracks that work best giving the band chance to stretch out a bit. Rise and Fall is an excellent example and the band go through lots of changes from the military style drum driven intro into melodic vocal parts and well constructed instrumental sections with a nice slow build finale with a tastefully played Guitar solo to fade. This track has now been divided into two parts for the cd version!

Shock Treatment is perhaps the best of the shorter tracks, an up tempo song with a strong vocal melody. Ark of Infinity and Atlantis are both over seven minutes. Atlantis was the album closer on the original version but Ark of Infinity closes the cd version and not such a good way to end in my opinion. Atlantis is much the stronger of the two having an epic feel with some lovely keyboard textures with a very grandiose finish.

As for the quality of the additional tracks on the cd version I am unable to comment having not heard them. What I can say though is that The Sentinel was a good album from Pallas, if not up to the quality of their predecessors and in the eighties helped give us hope that Progressive Rock still had a life.