THE SENTINEL

Buyer beware: not all editions of The Sentinel are equal. The best versions are the ones - such as the 1992 CD rerelease with the track listing outlined above, or the version in the Eyes In the Night boxed set - which include the various non-album B-sides from the same era. What's the big deal about those B-sides? Well, for one thing they by and large add more proggy material to the album; for another, other than Crown of Thorns they include key parts of the album concept which didn't make it onto the original release!

You see, the group originally planned to release the album as a double album, or perhaps a single disc consisting solely of the Atlantis Suite - a cornerstone of their live shows at the time - from start to finish, with the commercial songs released as singles to placate EMI; however, record company politics resulted in the running order of the album being tampered with to remove some of the Suite tracks and adding in some of the singles, almost completely obscuring the concept. The most complete offering of tracks from the Sentinel and associated sessions is found on the Sentinel discs found in the recent Eyes In the Night boxed set, which include all the non-album B-sides, plus a recording of Crown of Thorns not included on prior CD versions, as well as the UK and US mixes of the album proper, whilst restoring Rise and Fall to a single track rather than splitting it in two as some versions do.

Of course, the advantage of prior CD rereleases is that they attempted to provide a running order approximating the intended Atlantis Suite - but Pallas themselves had added or removed bits from it over the years, with recent versions only running to some 20-odd minutes, and arguably due to the record company vetoing the project they never quite managed a "definitive" version of it. Some editions resequence the track order so that the three songs the band cut as commercially accessible standalone singles to support the album are placed at the start and the following seven tracks comprise the Atlantis Suite itself; the Eyes In the Night release doesn't, but the nice thing about CDs is that they let us program track order nice and easily so that isn't too much of a downer. My personal running order of the Sentinel, based on the boxed set release, is to follow the reconfigured version with the opening tracks - Shock Treatment, Cut and Run, and Eyes In the Night - then to throw in Crown of Thorns as a segue into the more progressive material, and then a take on the Atlantis Suite which runs Rise and Fall/East West/March On Atlantis/Heart Attack/Atlantis/Ark of Infinity.

But enough of that - what of the music itself? Well, those three mainstream tracks leading off the album are pretty cheesy, but at least one of them - Eyes In the Night, formerly known as Arrive Alive - was a Pallas staple well before they signed to EMI, so they do represent a more accessible side of the band's sound which shouldn't be overlooked. The proggier tracks - Crown of Thorns and the Atlantis Suite itself - is great fun. Eddie Offord's presence as producer may make you tempted to make Yes comparisons, but personally I'm more reminded of a cross between the spacey majesty of Eloy and the drama and intricacy of classic Genesis. Either way, it's a treat for neo-prog fans - it's just a shame so many people just heard the single tracks and passed this one over.