Review:

on 2011-02-20 CharlesMartel Said:

I was seriously drawn to this album when it first came out. "Declaration" emerged at the height of the post punk era and it was the apparent connection with post-punk, which by now I had become fully immersed in, which drew me towards it. The Alarm seemed to be a band which was producing some good post punk music which fitted in with my taste and came at the right time. It offered a theme to go with the music, a sort of nostalgic look back at the days of glory and Empire. Sadly, it omitted to bring with it a remembrance that some of those days were nothing near glorious. Rousing songs with an anthemic quality cannot cover up for the underlying lack of basis for the theme.

In some ways that theme is a bit odd for a band like the Alarm. Springing from Wales, they never really sounded convincing when they displayed British patriotism - somehow it doesn-t seem quite, well, Welsh, if you know what I mean. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why, as an underlying factor rather than a principal one, I found it more difficult than I had anticipated to get behind the veneer of the album and into its core.

Taken individually, some of the songs may be all right to listen to. "Blaze of Glory" is perhaps the best example, and still manages to stir the blood in the way in which it was intended. The trouble is that, after listening to an album of this sort of neo-imperialist jingoism, it all becomes a bit tiresome. The band later had some success on the Christian rock circuit but, in truth, this offering, probably their best, was as hollow as the sentiments expressed within it. Bombast and stirring pride might make for good military music - something to play at the Edinburgh Tattoo - but even on a concept album (which this is on the verge of becoming) seems out of place with electric guitars.

At the end of the day, the Alarm were nothing more than old-fashioned rock and rollers - pub rockers if you like. I had been confused by the moody pose on the front cover and above all by the hairstyles - that sort of I-have-just-got-up-after-sleeping-under-a-hedge-all-night look which, in retrospect, made the eighties as stylistically challenged as bell bottoms and platform shoes had made the seventies. I had thought it was different than it was. But I had to buy the album to find that fact out. In essence, the band had nothing new to offer, musically.

As a result of this analysis, I found out that my original purpose behind buying this album was wrong. It's too commercial for my taste, even though at the time I bought it I was slowly drifting, by default, towards the mainstream. It's trying to be something it's not. The strangled, laryngitic vocal delivery never quite seemed convincing. Never mind that the band had a Christian emphasis, which never came out around this time and frankly wouldn't have mattered even if it had. The songs are about things which don't relate to me. It is post punk veering towards pop - the pop of the dreadful new romantics. The hair says it all, guys - this is the eighties writ large. In truth, I don't like it that much any more. It is not something I would purchase nowadays. These days I don't listen to it, though when it comes on the radio, "Blaze of Glory" can still get the foot tapping, though only in relatively small doses.
Rating: 5/10