Pallas (band)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pallas
Country	Scotland
Years active	1980-
Genres	neo-progressive
Labels	Harvest

Pallas is a progressive rock band based in the U.K. They were one of the bands at the vanguard of what was termed the "neo-progressive" movement during progressive rock's second-wave revival in the early eighties (other major players included Marillion, IQ, Twelfth Night, and Pendragon).

Beginning life as Pallas Athene, they dropped the latter moniker and began hitting the club circuit at the beginning of a grassroots revival of full-blown progressive rock; which, at the time, was extremely unfashionable due to the overwhelming influence of pop and New Wave. They eventually secured a successful headlining run at London's Marquee Club (a hotbed for the neo-progressive revival). A highlight of their set at that time and also a highlight of the early Marquee shows (until the Marquee threatened to ban the band if they did not stop playing it) was a track called "The Ripper". A fifteen-minute epic about child abuse, insanity, rape and murder, the climax of "The Ripper" featured lead singer Euan Lowson dressed half as an old man, half as a woman, acting out a chilling rape on stage (it should be remembered that the infamous Yorkshire Ripper case was still, at the time, a relatively fresh news item).

Cover art from The Sentinel, painted by Patrick Woodroffe

After releasing a self-produced LP entitled Arrive Alive (recorded in Scotland in 1981), Pallas was courted by EMI records (who had just signed contemporaries Marillion) and went into the studio with Yes/ELP engineer Eddie Offord to record the LP that would become The Sentinel.

All this boded well for Pallas, but EMI's initial interest in the band waned (EMI perhaps feeling that Marillion had the better potential for mass-market success, and the market may not sustain both bands^{[citation needed]}), as did Offord's enthusiasm for producing the album properly, and when The Sentinel was released in 1984, it was regarded as a compromised affair by all involved (despite sporting what was widely regarded as one of the genre's most beautiful covers ever, illustrated by Patrick Woodroffe).

When the album was finally released on CD, it was in a remixed version with additional songs that had been written for the album and released as singles, but not included on the original release. Thus the CD gives a much better idea of how the original concept was meant to sound.

Some elaborately staged shows in the UK (using The Sentinel concept as the theme and featuring props by the special effects team from Doctor Who) failed to generate the needed interest, and by the time the band was ready to record the second LP for EMI, lead singer/songwriter Lowson decided to leave the band (and the music industry) for good. In the wake of Lowson's departure the band recorded the Knightmoves EP with new singer Alan Reed, recruited from Scottish contemporaries Abel Ganz. The centre-piece of the EP was Sanctuary, an epic worthy of the finest in progressive rock. Early editions of the EP also included a bonus 7" featuring 2 tracks recorded as demos. The band went on to record a second EMI album, The Wedge. In spite of a focus on shorter more accessible tracks the interest of EMI was waning as the fortunes of the wider neo-progressive movement faltered and A&R departments flocked to safer bets.

The band fell into a semi-dormant state for a number of years but CD reissues of the back catalogue with extra tracks and re-engineered versions of The Sentinel kept interest alive. Pallas persevered on & off for several years, and in 1998 release a comeback album, Beat The Drum. This featured a harder sound, returning to the band's classic rock roots but still retained a progressive sound with glimpses of the epic on tracks such as album closer Fragments of The Sun. This was enough to revive interest in the band and saw the internet become an important component in their career. By now the band was a spare time activity for it members but still they manage regular studio output and occasional short tours of Europe and North America. The Cross & The Crucible, a loosely conceptual album exploring the historical tension between religion and science was released in 2001 to generally positive reviews. The Dreams of Men was released in 2005, an ambitious project showing the band at its best which was supplemented by the talents of Scots traditional musician Paul Anderson on violin and classical singer Pandy Arthur.

In common with a number of others from the 1980s neo-prog scene, notably IQ, the band continue to pursue their musical interests. In spite of being largely ignored by major labels and mainstream music press, with the support of small independent German based label InsideOut the band continue to record and play regular live dates, particularly in Northern Europe. Recent years have also seen a number of supplementary releases such as two from the Radio Clyde River Sessions series, a double live collection, several officially bootleg recordings and Mythopoeia, an archive CD-Rom of audio and video material form the band's history.