Alarm - O2 Academy, Liverpool, 8/3/2016

  by Richard Lewis

published: 15 / 5 / 2016

intro

Marking their 35th year as a band, the Alarm plays to a sizeable crowd supporting the Stranglers at the Liverpool Academy

In the 35 years logged since their name change from The Toilets to their present moniker, The Alarm have accrued a cult following through their extensive touring over the years. Supporting tonight’s headliners The Stranglers and playing to an impressively large early doors crowd, the Mike Peters-led rabble rousers continue to mine the same impassioned songs that established them in the early 1980s. The heart-on-sleeve lyricism and strident thrash of ‘Superchannel’, their biggest UK hit ‘68 Guns’ and the well-suited ‘Deeside’ (which faces the other side of the Wirral peninsula opposite the Mersey), highlights the Springsteen influence that runs through Peters’ work. Guitarist James Stevenson’s lead lines embellish the tracks. The anthemic ‘My Town’, played late in the set, garners the biggest response from the crowd, along with an audience-sating rendition of ‘Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke’. Concluding, with the bulk of the headliners’ audience watching them, the none-more-apt ‘Spirit of '76’ concludes proceedings in raucous fashion.

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