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from the drummer, the enigmatically named Twist. Unusually for a band the music to most of the songs is written by the bass player Eddie MacDonald, who also takes lead vocals on Third Light.

The riff of their most famous song of this period is as epic as anything they ever wrote, big guitars and a brass section rip across the silence and a battle cry ensues that still sends shiver up the spine today,

"sixty eight guns will never die
sixty eight guns our battle cry"

In the tradition of the epic number, the song reduces to a vocal and piano part of dark despair, enabling the song to rise back up from this low point to its full fury and by now you just want to smash something up. This is the ghost of the punk resurfacing for its final death rattle before music was taken in a more money orientated direction. And ironically this is exactly the warning that the Alarm are giving us. Its ok to be yourself, its ok to be poor, its ok to be ordinary. Ordinary people are capable of the most extraordinary things.

By contrast We Are The Light is an acoustic mid paced ballad about hope, some fantastic backing vocals brings this to life and a violin weaves through the song adding a gentle refrain to the words.

Drums rattle in a tribal stomp, screams rise from behind it and the bass and guitar build, the song and espescially the main guitar riff comes close to the sound of U2, but Shout At The Devil still retains enough of their own qualities to make it an Alarm song. Blaze Of Glory is that lighters in the air sing along that appears at the end of a live set, the horn section is back and backing voices as big as ever.

Guitarist Dave Sharp gets the chance to show his talents on Tell Me, a self penned acoustic piece on which he takes lead vocal. Typically epic and constantly building in power and just when you have got the song in your veins it comes to and end, to be replaced by a mournful harmonica and a dark number called the Deceiver. The album plays out in typical style, the full on style of the band that by now you either love or hate of Howling Wind. This is escapist music in best sense of the meaning. It is based in reality and deals with real themes, but has a power and a vivid passion that carries you off from the worries and concerns of your everyday life, and makes you want to champion the worries and concerns of everyone elses.

The band have the abitily to capture passion in their music and when a song calls for a wistful and reflective feel they do it with a delicate touch, but when it needs to be big, its very big. These are stadium rock song written by a band that new they were going to get the chance to play them in that enviroment one day. What does stand the band apart somewhat from their contemporaries is the full use of backing harmony which goes a long way to create that bog sound. Lyrically they have a lot in common with Stuart Adamsons writing for Big Country, these are tales of the every day underdogs, the punks and working class people who live all around us, but laced with hope and a two fingers to the system attitude that was still in music in the days before commercialism and chart success became the driving force in music. Big songs, big hair and a band that are still revered today by those old enough to remember. If you are not old enought to remember, then you can always catch the band in their solo projects or on their occasional reformations even as I speak.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
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