
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 recording studio with Yes/Emerson, Lake & Palmer engineer Eddy Offord to record the album that would become The Sentinel. 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.
All this boded well for Pallas, but EMI’s initial interest in the band waned, as did Offord’s enthusiasm for producing the album properly. In order to increase the commercial potential of the group’s major label debut the running