Festival) made Pallas a hot property. 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. 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 and join a band from the English city of Derby called Minas Tirith, later to change their name to ERG. In the wake of Lowson's departure the band recorded the Knightmoves EP with new singer Alan Reed, former vocalist and frontman with Abel Ganz (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. 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. 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