I hadn't seen the Alarm for some time. About a year ago was the last occasion. The first had been a year before that. By dint of their cynicism lacking' freshness, those far off occasions offered something exciting and positive. The Alarm were a thrilling antidote to the prevailing blandness, although still a long way from being a total remedy.

Against their optimism all else paled. Yet they rode that attribute with a wide-open naiveté. You could see clear through to to the pitfalls waiting ahead. The future would be a tricky business.

The last time I saw them I was haunted by that opening image. The heroics wore paramount. As the fists gaily punched at the empty air, the guitars were held aloft in some tragic .salute to pithless, pointless nostalgia. And it rained applause.

Their rise to fame was balanced by that apparent decline into empty gestures. '68 Guns',' a, reasonable enough song, became a cheap and inconsequential piece of 'anthemic' (snooze) airplay-orientated vinyl.

The power and potential that ran in their veins had been drained off into the blood-sucking mainstream. All their songs had the dull echo of empty, meaningless vessels. Increasingly they were adopted by the traditional r'n'r corps in gratitude for their ceaseless falling into the requisite semantics – 'glory', 'blaze', 'battle' etc – and casting of the necessary emotive shapes.

The case against them was mounting. All the evidence said that, the Alarm's burning ambition was not to inspire action and change within the confines of an endangered medium but simply to be accepted by it.

The music failed to ever be sharp (sit down, Dave!) enough to bite. It was rounded to the point of being bloated (portly Mike Peters – deleted vague digression on the relevance of physique to songwriting), never sporting the nimble ecstasy to scythe through criticism.

They talked constantly of songs and good tunes. Which I took to be the knack of linking suitable entries from the Thesaurus Of Passion (Omnibus 2/6) into couplets of 'Courage' and arranging them along lines of palatable melody. All they ever write is EPICS. Great, fantastic epitaphs to the preening majesty of being in a rock band.

Tempering the lot was the servile observation, of tradition. They called it 'the tradition of punk'! I thought punk was about destroying tradition. The Alarm leapt in and enjoyed the behemoth. They courted the company of its conservative elements, the old guard who find fervent joy in the works of Iron Leppard and Def Maiden – bad company!

The Alarm I read in interviews conducted feverish spouting. That hundred per cent belief in themselves rolling out like an evangelical zeal. It was as if a four-way brain-washing had been undertaken years ago in Rhyl which burnt out the lobes. Allowing them to think outside of their own 'message'.

Dave rattled on about being "half as good as the Clash". So! A Clash substitute, a half-way surrogate for when the real thing is away.

They spoke of audience trust while up on stage they would project heroic fantasies. Those boots! All spurs and no blood. Filling the blueprint of a 'rebel' band.

Then see them in Hollywood. Being snapped looking pious in some glittery selection of Californian Anglophile celebs. A Sylvie Simmons review which eulogises over their "music with morals". My heathen upbringing makes that phrase linger with unsavoury connections.

Are people with guitars the ones to trust? Is the Alarm what we need? For "five or ten albums"?

Monday night, January 1984. I'm in this hotel room pouring over the 'Declaration' lyric sheet and snatching a first hearing minutes before going to interview Mike Peters (three floors up – pacing the, carpet).

I'm surprised by the contents. I half expected (only half because I kinda lost interest when the Alarm became more of a ritual than a band) a dank batch of too-easy-going sloganeering, a catalogue of 'big'-sounding EPICS.

It wasn't. It stirred with a perky rise of resonance than ran deeper than mere shouting and finger pointing hysteria. Although the words still rang with 'smash', 'march! 'thunder', 'battle 'anger', 'blaze' (not necessarily in that order) and the anticipated lack of wit and irony.

A lift ride later and I'm pouring out the accusations. Mike Peters, sod (earthy type, y'know), smiles throughout.

Everything I throw at him (a guitar pick and several tea bags) gets returned with a counter rather than a defence. Some of his replies even have question marks at the end. His eyes are fixed on mine and never affect a shift of gaze to betray, irritation. Never uncomfortable, he sits there grinning and waiting for me to unload the flak.

He enjoys it! And he doesn't even pretend to have ALL THE ANSWERS. Just a pretty neat line in... honesty, really.

But that wasn't the Convincing. I strode out to see them play. Edinburgh Coasters. I unintentionally miss the first part of what is normally pushing on being a two hour show.

By the end I was bowled away. I gave in (but not up). My hand thrust deep in coat pocket involuntarily clenched into a fist. There was a grin on my face as I realised I wanted to punch the air.

HEROICS

"ARE YOU calling us heroes? It's about fighting back, fighting back with love. We wrote 'Blaze Of Glory' specifically for specifically for someone who is in a group or who has something to say and is not afraid of expressing certain values. Those values being based on a better world is gonna come and attempting to see a more peaceful environment.

"Anyone who says things like that gets shot down for being cliched. I think if people have got that belief than it's fair enough them keeping going out there and doing it. A lot of people will put you down for the clothes you wear. People have been yelling at us because of our hair recently.

"I remember being a punk and it not mattering what you looked like. Everyone's slipped back into this complacency, normality. It's reverted back and we're in grave danger of losing the momentum that started up a few years ago.

"That's what the Alarm are fighting against. Even within ourselves. When we wrote 'Where Were You Hiding', we wrote a finger pointing song but also aimed it at ourselves. Complacency could easily seep into us with 'boy, we're making it, we've got a few records in the charts'. 'Blaze Of Glory' is about the people who follow the band and I believe in those people and it's about ourselves. It wakes us up every night."

FISTS

"WE TRY to be honest on stage. If you're talking to somebody you wave your arms about all the time. If I happen to be going (raises fist) half the time, I'm not going to think 'hang on, some journalist is going to slag me off for putting my first in the air' all the time.

"It's up to the Alarm to beat off those clichés which have become established with us. With the new album, I don't think we've gone and made what could termed the ultimate Alarm album. There's a lot of variation in the thing. It's not what just has been played in our live act. We've used sequencers, even horns and strings.

"We put out what was basically our anthem '68 Guns', without pandering to our fans, without making it just as a live record. It was a challenge to them as well as ourselves. We try to make our records say what they've got to say in the shortest possible time.

"I made a statement at the end of 'Blaze Of Glory', holding my guitar up above my head. That made its point. It's been felt, so there's no need to carry on doing that. After a while that's what could be termed as heroics, but we stopped doing it and let the song stand on its own. I'm not denying the fact that we did it or saying that it went wrong. It was a great statement. It said 'here's the guitar, come and try and knock it down'. I think the audience would see the point. People under-estimate audiences these days. People don't just follow the Alarm on blind faith."

TRUST

"I'VE SEEN the reaction that seeing the Alarm live has had. They haven't hung their hopes on us, they've gone out and used what inspiration they've got from us, talking to us and seeing the friendship that we have. They've taken that into their own lives.

"There was an experience Dave had in New York when two girls in wheelchairs came and saw us playing on the pier. Dave chatted to them and they came back a week later to the Ritz on crutches. They'd got out of their chairs, gone out and got themselves jobs.

"It's not that we touched them and they got better but they'd gone and done it for themselves. It's just little things like people starting up their own fanzines. From little acorns ... I'm the living example that people don't just hang their faith in groups. We took the example shown to us and made it come true."

TRADITION

"I'VE NEVER really said we're on the punk tradition. One thing that happened with punk was that it was very anarchistic, all Destroy the System, and what's fallen sour is that people are still trying to destroy the system. They could be building something new and putting things back together.

"we were in a pretty awful group before and tried everything possible to sell our souls to make it in rock and roll. A number of events happened. Kevin Rowland saw us and said 'the group's no good, it doesn't mean anything'. The most important thing anybody said was 'you can't drag people to see the band but if the music good enough it'll drag people from all over the world. We went borne totally devastated. We thought we were great! The group split up but our friendship didn't and we started to put things back together, saying goodbye to the old ways.

"Right from the start the Alarm have tried not to be your average group. We never made demos, we made a single ourselves and loads of people have done it. People say that rock and roll is dead and it'll never come back. But it keeps coming back."

COMPANY

"SURELY A GROUP can come along who can break down all the barriers and be linked by someone who likes Einsturzende Naubauten and someone else who likes Def Leppard. There's a middle ground that isn't the fence but breaking it down. There's room for a group to appeal to everyone and still have credibility. Surely the aim of all artists is to provoke reaction out of all people?

"Someone said to me 'The Alarm stand for peace, isn't that a hippy ideal?' and I thought we all stand for peace so it shouldn't be talked of in those terms.

"Maybe some of the things that groups had in the 60s were good things. Everybody said 'right, punk rock, the buck steps here, everything before that is dead. But maybe they really did have some good ideas worth going back to.

"There were good things before the drugs got involved in it and the big lumbering supergroups got in and distorted the idea. If we were to become a supergroup ourselves we'd not want to roll off the end of the bandwagon but keep going and keep being fresh and keep the momentum.

"We make music when we've got something to say not, when we need to make money. You can learn from the past and from today. Music now is probably the most exciting it's been for years and years. If people look for movements and hidden meanings they're going to kill it off."

SONGS

"We're gifted as people. We've a knack of writing a good tune, we write a pretty decent word as well. We get into the Top Twenty with words that don't normally get there.

"I was talking to a producer in America and he told me that Bob Dylan really likes the Alarm because he wishes he could write a song as good as we can.

"I've got respect for groups who can't write a good tune but who still have a lot to say, they've got every right to be there. Our words, I think, are the right ones as they stand on good morals and isn't it good to see a band like us in there with some of the things which are very complacent?

'We're providing a challenge and we're bringing out a reaction in people we're amongst your Michael Jacksons and Duran Durans. Those audiences are a new generation of people and they're going to grow up looking for music that inspires them. Maybe we're not thought provoking for you but I'm sure we are for them.

"You say we write epics. We're a young band with our first album only just coming out. And we've got talent. The new songs that are starting to come through have a lot of depth. People are misplacing their judgement of the Alarm on a few songs and a few words that leap out. Often they blind themselves by thinking 'ah 'Glory' this is an Epic.

"We've a song like 'Third Light', a war story right, surely that can be used as an analogy as well as being taken literally? I don't people look at seriously enough to base a real judgement on them.

"I can quite easily see why people have called us naive. I'll take that as a criticism but I can't deny the songs. In a way these songs are what broke down the doors for us, they were our battering ram so we had to write something pretty hard.

"I've not been given the gift to mess around with drills and stuff. I've been given the gift to write songs and play the guitar. I feel there's plenty I can inject into the old format. You get out what you put in.

"It's like Seb Coe. He's probably the greatest runner at the moment . The way he was born is totally suited to running fast but there's probably someone out there who can run the race faster than him but they can't be bothered to find out if they like doing it or not."

PARTIES

"DON'T YOU go to parties? Doesn't everyone. That was backstage at our gig. I believe in looking at peoples hearts not their appearances. Everyone what's to go to the good parties and I can take them or leave them myself. I'm happy enough just being in the group.

People aren't interested in printing a picture of me with our fans or talking to them. They'll print the picture of me at the party but our kids know better than that, they all know what the Alarm is. If we want to go to a party we go to a party, so what? It's just a by-product of the of the music. Cheap news. Gutter press. I could sit here and make a mega defence but it just happens. We had a party in Salford."

ZEAL

"YEAH, I'VE got confidence in myself. Because I know where I'm heading, I've got good things to look forward to. I've gone out and made a life I'm happy with and surely that's everybody's aim. Maybe you haven't found that so you can't relate to us.

"But I don't think you can begrudge someone who's happy with their lot. Not many people can say 'I like my work, I like my friends, I like the company I keep, I'm really happy' but I can and I'm proud to say it."

FUTURE

"WE'LL BE AROUND as long as we've got things to do. I see our main aim as to keep the challenge there. To be able to shift direction. There are a lot of styles on the album that we could easily pick up. Become completely acoustic or start using all sequencers. It's a challenge to keep the energy and see that it doesn't get cliched or tied down with the things are in the Alarm's history.

"There's a great future for us and its a future we'll use with a lot of integrity."