History
Formed in 1974 as 'Rainbow', they dropped the name after Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple and called his new band Rainbow. [1] Pallas 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. [1] Ignoring prevailing trends, the band even directly imitated older progressive rock bands, with vocalist Brian Wood mimicking the voice and hairstyle of Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Mike Stobbie donning a Rick Wakeman-style cape, and drummer Derek Forman constructing a helmet for himself out of sheet metal. [1] The band temporarily changed their name to Pallas Athene during this time. [1] However, their debut EP (featuring tracks such as "Reds Under the Beds") saw them attempting to fit in with the ongoing punk rock movement by emphasising harder rock and deliberately avoiding signature progressive rock elements such as Mellotron and twelve-string guitar. [1]
An upheaval in the band's ranks during 1979 saw most of the original members leave, with only Forman and bassist Graeme Murray remaining alongside the new recruits. Murray contacted Marillion vocalist Fish through an advertisement in Melody Maker , establishing a relationship between the two progressive rock bands that led to a nationwide tour of small venues which enabled Pallas to establish a following in England, where they were previously unknown (and similarly enabled Marillion to break in to the Scotland market). [1] They secured a successful headlining run at London's Marquee Club (a hotbed for the neo-prog 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 new lead singer Euan Lowson dressed half as an old man, half as a woman, acting out a rape on stage (the Yorkshire Ripper case was still, at the time, a fresh news item).
The Marillion association and Pallas's relentless gigging (which included a spot on the bill at the 1983 Reading Music Festival) made Pallas a hot property. [1] After releasing a self-produced LP entitled Arrive Alive (recorded in Scotland in 1981), Pallas was courted by EMI Records (who had just signed Marillion) and went into the recording studio with Yes/Emerson, Lake & Palmer engineer Eddy Offord to record The Sentinel . [2] The plan was that The Sentinel would be a recorded version of The Atlantis Suite, an epic centrepiece of the band's live performances at the time based around a futuristic version of the story of Atlantis, with plenty of references to the Cold War.
In order to increase the commercial potential of the group's major label debut the running order was changed, adding more commercial songs and removing much of the Atlantis Suite material. The excised Atlantis Suite tracks were issued as B-sides on singles at the time of the album's release, and in 2004 a remastered version of the album was released with the Atlantis Suite intact as the band intended it.
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 their second album for EMI, Lowson decided to leave the band. [2] In the wake of Lowson's departure the band recorded the Knightmoves EP with new singer Alan Reed, [2] former vocalist and frontman with Abel Ganz [3] [4] (cf. Abel Gance). The centre-piece of the EP was the epic "Sanctuary", and early editions of the EP also included a bonus 7" featuring two tracks recorded as demos.
The band went on to record a second EMI album, The Wedge. [2] The Wedge was selling well in Europe, but upon returning from a tour Pallas learned that all of their friends and associates at EMI had either left the company or been fired, and that EMI was withdrawing all promotion for the album. [1]
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 and off for several years, and in 1999 released 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". Interest in the band revived, and the internet became an important component in their career. By now the band was a spare time activity for its members, but they managed regular studio output and occasional short tours of Europe and North America. The Cross & the Crucible, a loose concept album exploring the historical tension between religion and science was released in 2001. The Dreams of Men was released in 2005, supplemented by Paul Anderson on violin and classical singer Pandy Arthur.
In spite of being largely ignored by major record labels and the mainstream music press, with the support of the German independent record label InsideOut the band continued to record and play regular live dates, particularly in Northern Europe. There were also a number of supplementary releases, such as two from the Radio Clyde River Sessions series, a double live collection, several official bootleg recordings and Mythopoeia, an archive CD-ROM of audio and video material from the band's history.
With effect from 28 January 2010, lead singer Alan Reed left the band he had fronted for the past 26 years. He has been replaced by Paul Mackie.
On 27 July 2010, the band announced they had signed a record deal for three albums with Music Theories/Mascot Records. The new album, XXV, was released 27 January 2011. The band confirmed that the album will be the successor to their 1984 release The Sentinel, thematically.
On 24 July 2011, Pallas opened the Prog Stage at the High Voltage Festival in London. [5] Their half-an-hour set largely contained material from 'XXV', plus the song 'Eyes in the Night (Arrive Alive)'. Concert Live recorded the performance. [6]
On 30 November 2013, Pallas played a full gig in Glasgow. [7] The set contained not only known songs from the past albums, but also featured two new ones from the album Wearewhoweare, scheduled for release in 2014. At the end of the set, former frontman Euan Lowson appeared on stage for two songs.
In June 2018, Graeme Murray, posting from the band's Facebook account, stated: "I think there has been a long enough silence on the PALLAS front. The band I suppose is not DEAD, as we are all still alive, just not necessarily on the same continent, or wavelength. BUT not totally dead. Lets just say "in a state of suspended animation". the patient may come back to life!!!" [8]
In December 2023 Pallas released new album The Messenger with returning singer Alan Reed replacing Paul Mackie.
