Walking into The Garage on Sunday night felt like an occasion. The Alarm were back, with Dave Sharp, Eddie Macdonald, and Nigel Twist sharing a stage for the first time in over twenty years, and you could feel it in the room long before anyone played a note. People had travelled for this. Old friends found each other in the crowd, swapping stories about gigs from thirty years ago. And with the loss of Mike Peters in 2025, his absence was always going to sit somewhere in the room. But this never felt like a night built around grief. It felt like a celebration of the songs, the band, and the people who have kept that connection alive. When Sharp, Macdonald, and Twist finally walked out, the noise that met them said everything. For most people in that room, this was a night they never expected to see.
And then there was Rob Latimer. Taking on these songs was never going to be easy. Mike Peters had such a distinctive voice and presence that anyone stepping up to that microphone had an enormous amount to live up to. Latimer, though, didn’t try to be Mike Peters. He brought his own voice to the material, and he was excellent: powerful all night, completely at home in the songs, and never once reaching for an impression of what had gone before. He owned them in his own right.
He had the stage presence to match. He worked the front, connected with the crowd, and looked like a man thrilled to be up there. Within two songs he had the room on his side, and he never gave it back. But while Latimer commanded the front of the stage, it was hard not to keep glancing at Nigel Twist behind the drums. He looked delighted, properly delighted, to be playing these songs with his old bandmates again, and that joy carried right through the set.
Opening with “Newtown Jericho,” the band got the room moving straight away. Guitars loud, crowd singing, Latimer’s voice cutting through. “Hardland” and “Permanence in Change” followed, before “Devolution Workin’ Man Blues” and “The Deceiver” kept the momentum going. It wasn’t a polished, note-perfect performance, and it didn’t need to be. It felt like a proper rock gig, with energy pouring off the stage and straight back from the floor.
Then came one of the real moments of the night. Dave Sharp took the lead on “One Step Closer to Home.” This was something else. For a few minutes it felt like being back in the Barrowland Ballroom. The emotion in the room, the crowd singing every word, and the passion in both the lyrics and the playing. One of those moments that’s difficult to put into words. Sharp didn’t need to do much. The song did most of the work.
Hearing his voice on it, surrounded by a room singing back, brought the band’s earliest years flooding back, and with them, the connection The Alarm has always had with their audience. People weren’t singing along because they knew the words. They were singing because the song meant something to them.
Then “68 Guns” arrived, and The Garage erupted the second that opening rang out. Latimer had the crowd in the palm of his hand, and the whole place was bouncing. “Rain in the Summertime” followed, voices coming from every corner of the venue.
You could look around and see people singing, dancing, and remembering. This wasn’t an audience watching a band play old songs. They were in it. “Spirit of ’76” and “Strength” kept the pace up, and by now the four of them were locked in together: Macdonald and Twist driving it from the back, Sharp’s guitar carrying that unmistakable edge, Latimer out front pulling the room along with him.
Working the barrier, encouraging the crowd, and throwing himself into the bigger choruses, he had them all night. “Sold Me Down the River” was another huge moment as the main set headed for the finish. The band left the stage. The crowd wasn’t remotely ready for the night to end.
Then came the encore. Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” brought everyone back together, and it was a brilliant way to close. The Garage was bouncing again, the crowd singing, and the band throwing everything into it. After everything the evening had carried, it felt like the perfect release: loud, chaotic, and full of attitude.
What worked best was that none of it felt like an attempt to recreate the past. This wasn’t The Alarm pretending it was 1985. Too much has changed, and the band has been through too much. It felt instead like musicians reconnecting with songs that still mean something to them, in front of an audience who still care just as much.
The comparisons were always going to come. But perhaps the fairest way to look at it is that Latimer wasn’t there to replace anyone. He was there to sing the songs. And he did that brilliantly.
The real beauty of the night was watching the different strands of The Alarm’s history pull together in one room. Sharp singing “One Step Closer to Home.” The crowd carrying it. Latimer is making the songs his own. Three original members back on a stage together.
Walking out afterwards, you could feel that nobody wanted it to stop there.
There were calls for another song, and talk of taking it stateside. Who knows? Time will tell.
But if it does continue, let it go out in a blaze, because that crowd certainly wasn’t finished.
They played like one band. There was a real connection between Sharp, Macdonald, Twist, and Latimer, and for those few hours this was The Alarm in all its glory.
For me, it’s “One Step Closer to Home” that will linger longest. Standing there, the whole room singing, Dave Sharp’s voice carrying it. Barrowland all over again.
Then, with “Rockin’ in the Free World” still ringing round the walls, it was over.
The sound of The Alarm echoed around London at the weekend, and it was great to have it back.
Surely this can’t be the end, because The Alarm sounded like they had only just begun.
Review by James Edmond
