Interview
(Progressive Newsletter Nr.36 07/01)
excerpts from an interview with Graeme Murray (Bass, Vocals)
Yes Pallas are back with a new album within two years of the last. The past two years have probably been the most exciting two years in the band's history since we signed to EMI in 1984. The biggest difference over the last two years has been the fact that the whole band organisation is now back up and running at full speed. The best comparison I can make is to compare us to a Formula one racing team which has been out of the sport for a few years. When we got back together to do "Beat the Drum", it was like we had just built a new F1 car and returned to start racing. We were very pleased with "Beat the Drum" because it was a collection of material which we had written over several years when the band was doing very little , going in to record "Beat the Drum" gave us the chance to empty out the larder of all the old ideas that were lying about and effectively enabled us to clear the way to move ahead with brand new ideas and enthusiasm. Coming back to my analogy we felt that with "Beat the drum" our racing car was quite competitive and was qualifying regularly in the top 10 but not yet ready to challenge Michael Schumacher for pole position. We have been back touring now for three years which has meant that we have had the chance to re-establish contact with the audience, and this has helped us to rediscover our focus. This was very important when it came to writing the new album and we just felt that the band was back firing on all cylinders. Each member of the band is playing better than ever and we feel that we are probably at our most productive ever. To complete the analogy, we' re now ready to put the car on pole position and win races regularly. The main differences between recording the last album and the new album are that we are sharper and more focused, and I think that has helped us to translate our ideas more accurately into the songs we want to hear. We have also improved the facilities in the studio as well as updating our equipment which has also helped us be more creative with this record.
In my opinion your new album has a more back-to-the-roots feeling, sometimes it reminds me even of "The sentinel" days. The arrangements are more complex, diverse and more powerful than the predecessor. Do you feel the same and if yes what led you to the decision to become more progressive, sinfonical again?
We would agree with you entirely that the new our album has gone back to our roots to some extent. What we set out to do musically on "The Cross and the Crucible" was to combine the best elements of all our previous albums to try and finally make the definitive Pallas album so that we could stand back and say to fans 'O.K. you guys this is what Pallas are all about'. I think I can speak on behalf of all the band members in saying that we feel we have hit the mark with "The Cross and the Crucible", and that we can really stand back and say this album defines who and where we are musically. With "The Wedge" album we were trying to record an album which would create a bridge between several musical styles. I know that some people recognised this and as a band we felt we had achieved this, however we set out to try and expand our appeal to mainstream rock audiences, heavymetal audiences, and symphonic rock audiences, but in the end all we seemed to do was upset everybody!!! . I think it's very sad, because I really feel that the wedge album was ahead of its time and was really very special. Unfortunately it seemed to upset a large number of symphonic rock purists, as being too commercial. I think that that is a great pity. With "The Cross and the Crucible" we set out to leave no one in any doubt that we are a progressive symphonic band, that also seriously kick ass in a heavy rock kind of way, and that we are not some kind of pop band writing singles. As far as being more powerful than previous albums again I would agree with you. Anyone who has seen Pallas live will know how powerful the band are, however threat to a career we have struggled to capture that power on our studio albums. We think we have captured the power more successfully on the new album but to really get the full flavour of Pallas power you need to come along to see the band live and hear these new songs.
Is there a kind of concept, a connection through the lyrics on this album?
I don't think we would go as far as to call "The Cross and the Crucible" a concept album but there is definitely a theme that runs through all of the lyrics on this album. We really started to write the lyrics for the I'll bomb during the tour we did in autumn 1999. This new millennium it was very much in our minds and wanted to do an album which looked back over the last 2000 years and summed up how the human racehad performed during that time a new sentence Think it's best to leave it to our audience to listen to the songs and music and make-up their minds for themselves whether or not our conclusions are right or wrong, but they would say he we felt quite strongly that the album should close with "Celebration", so as not to be too gloomy. What we hoped to do was to make people think a bit because after all symphonic rock music does tend to be a thinking person's music , and we feel it's very important to spend time and thought on lyrics, as they play such an important part in painting the full picture.
Were all the songs of the new album composed within the last two years or did you also use older material, maybe even before the time of "Beat the drum"?
Every song on the new album has been written during the last two years. A small part of Midas Touch had been written previously but I think this is the only song that has any content which dates back to before 1999. The past two years have been very fertile as far as new ideas are concerned, and the problem we had with the album was what to leave off, rather than what to put on it. This is a nice problem to have however.
Regarding the sales-figures, the loyality of your fans, the whole music scene, what has changed between your early days and now?
Obviously with the band having disappeared for almost 10 years it's bound to have effected our sales figures, and needless to say the music scene has changed during that time. I can tell you however that we have a hard core of extremely loyal fans who have kept the faith during that time and who have given us a fantastic welcome back. We are very lucky to be signed to Inside-out Music who are great believers in symphonic rock music, and it is thanks to these guys that symphonic rock is once again enjoying a resurgence. You only have to look at the new releases over the past 18 months to see that, and as a consequence the audience for this music is once again on the rise. The biggest problem is persuading the mainstream media to give any coverage at all to this kind of music. I don't understand whythe mainstream media hate symphonic rock so much. In the UK and think it must be the only kind of music ie. classical,country, pop, jazz ,folk,dance, etc. that gets no radio coverage at all . It seems quite ridiculous when you consider the huge place in rock history taken up by a symphonic bands. We live in hope that things might change but in the meantime we are relying on playing live, the Internet, and word of mouth, as well as fanzines to spread the word.
Are there any plans to tour again this year and have already think which songs you'll play? Maybe another cover, like Deep Purple's "Black night", which you played on the last tour?
We are planning to go out on tour in Europe during November. We hope to do around 10 dates throughout Europe although we are not in a position to announce details of those dates as yet. This will be quite a momentous tour from our point of view, because a large amount of songs which we have been playing now for years will be retired to make way for songs off the new album .We have recently played Midas Touch at a festival in Barcelona. We all got a fantastic buzz from playing one of the new songs and we're really looking for word to playing more of the new album in the autumn. As far as a cover version is concerned we usually enjoy playing at least one cover as our end of the show encore.What would be a great idea is if everyone it was to e-mail us at the band's website at www.pallas-uk.com and give us your suggestions as to a suitable cover. That way the fans could decide for us what the cover version should be.
Kristian Selm © Progressive Newsletter 2001