The Sentinel is the debut album by British Progressive rock

Progressive rock

Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...

 band Pallas

Pallas (band)

Pallas are a progressive rock band based in the UK. They were one of the bands at the vanguard of what was termed neo-progressive during progressive rock's second-wave revival in the early 1980s...

. It is a concept album

Concept album

In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

 with lyrics based upon Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 themes, using a futuristic version of the tale of Atlantis

Atlantis

Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....

 as a metaphor for a technologically advanced society brought to the brink of destruction. The cover artwork is by Patrick Woodroffe

Patrick Woodroffe

Patrick James Woodroffe is an English artist, etcher and drawer, who specialises in fantasy science-fiction artwork, with images that border on the surreal...

.

Much of the album's material first appeared in the Atlantis Suite, an epic SF rock opera which was a cornerstone of live Pallas shows at the time. The band's original intent was that the album would present the entire piece as a concept album, with the following running order:

Side 1

1. "Rise and Fall. part 1" - 6:05
2. "Eastwest" - 4:58
3. "March on Atlantis" - 5:23
4. "Rise and Fall, part 2" - 4:08

Side 2

1. "Heart Attack" - 7:59
2. "Atlantis" - 7:59
3. "Ark of Infinity" - 7:05

The group did in fact record the entire suite at the time; however, EMI

EMI

The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...

wanted the group to balance its progressive efforts with more commercial songs, such as "Eyes in the Night" (AKA "Arrive Alive"), "Cut and Run", and "Shock Treatment", and thus only three of the songs from the Atlantis Suite were presented in the original version of the album, and then not in the preferred running order, obscuring the original concept entirely. The excised songs were issued as B-sides and EP tracks. This frustrated many of the band's existing fans, since anyone who wanted to hear the entire Atlantis Suite would have to buy the album and all of the associated EPs and singles.

The ultimate result was an album which satisfied nobody. The group felt that the album had been compromised, and their existing fans were annoyed that the album didn't present the intact Atlantis Suite as they had been expecting. New listeners found the Atlantis concept impossible to follow due to the missing songs and muddled running order of the remaining material, and EMI themselves were disappointed with the low sales of the album and the failure of the commercial songs to attract a wider audience. The album was eventually re-released on CD in 1992, under the Centaur Records label, with bonus tracks and a different running order; the commercial tunes the band recorded at EMI's behest are put at the start of the running order as a "warm-up", whilst the remainder of the album consists of the Atlantis Suite in its entirety, as originally recorded in 1984 and as the band intended it to be presented all along. The record has been re-released again in 2004 under the Insideout label on a numbered, special edition cd with added cd-rom content.

Track listing

The Original 1984 release

Side 1

1. "Eyes in the Night (Arrive Alive)" - 4:08
2. "Cut and Run" - 5:02
3. "Rise and Fall" - 10:16

Side 2

1. "Shock Treatment" - 4:29
2. "Ark of Infinity" - 7:05
3. "Atlantis" - 8:00

The 1992 re-release on CD

1. "Shock Treatment" - 4:29
2. "Cut and Run" - 4:59
3. "Arrive Alive" - 4:05
4. "Rise and Fall. part 1" - 6:05
5. "Eastwest" - 4:58
6. "March on Atlantis" - 5:23
7. "Rise and Fall, part 2" - 4:08
8. "Heart Attack" - 7:59
9. "Atlantis" - 7:59
10. "Ark of Infinity" - 7:05

All tracks written by Pallas

Band members

• Euan Lowson – Lead vocals, backing vocals
• Graeme Murray – Bass guitar, guitars, backing vocals
• Ronnie Brown – Synthesisers, grand piano, backing vocals
• Niall Mathewson – Lead guitar, synthesiser, backing vocals
• Derek Forman – Drums, percussion