Veteran Welsh group The Alarm are gearing up to release new album Forward later this year. Frontman Mike Peters wrote the songs while in the hospital dealing with life-threatening illness: pneumonia and a serious leukemia relapse. “I literally took my guitar into the hospital with me,” Mike Says. “I was on the ward for such a long time, I started writing these songs in between IV sessions and the first people to hear the music were the very people who were trying to keep me alive.”
The new single from Forward is “Next,” an anthem about the possibilities of life, and Mike returned to the hospital to shoot the video. “Words cannot express the joy of leaving hospital after a long stay on the wards, especially when it means you have regained your health. I wanted to film something that captured the elation of knowing you are going home, moving on, going forwards ready for what lies ahead, for what’s next,” Mike says. “Andy Labrow shot the film in the hospital where I was treated for a Leukaemia relapse in a 20 minute burst of short, sharp energy. The edit flashes back and forth going in and out of focus, while the jump cuts reflect the uncertainty of my diagnosis along with the joy of being released back into the real world once my condition had stabilised and I had been discharged by the doctors. At night and in between IV sessions, I would walk the very same empty hospital corridors of the North Wales Cancer Centre trying to preserve whatever human strength I could hang on to. I literally focused my entire being on being able to walk out of the hospital on my own two feet and not in a wheelchair or with assistance. It’s what kept me positive and determined to regain a complete recovery.”
The Alarm will be back in NYC this summer for the two-day “Gathering NYC” at Gramercy Theater on June 23 & 24:
The Gathering NYC weekend will once again see Alarm Poppy flags fly over the city that never sleeps, with two full electric concerts at The Gramercy Theatre on June 23rd / June 24th 2023. Fans from all over the North American continent and many from other parts of the world, including South America, Asia, UK and Europe are expected to swell the ranks of Alarm fans celebrating 40 years of Alarm history – past, present and future.
Tickets for those shows are on sale now and are their only North American shows at the moment. All dates are listed below.
April 15 – Cardiff St. David’s Hall
June 23 & 24 – NYC – Gramercy Theater (Gathering NYC)