We have one less lion of autumn walking with us today. Mike Peters, the leader, heart, and soul of Welsh barnburner rockers The Alarm, saw his body finally give up the fight on April 28, 2025, against the cancer that, in various forms, had plagued him for 30 years. Peters was 66.

Peters fought the good fight with a tenacity that would shame the ordinary person, beating back cancer’s strength with a strength of his own, fueled by an unshakable faith in Jesus that humbles even the strongest among us. He worked at a ferocious pace, touring and recording until it was finally his time to experience firsthand the absolute reality his soul had longed for, even as his work on earth invited everyone to join in with him.

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Peters was a member of rock and roll’s second motivational generation, a collective of artists devoted to their craft and believing that music could serve as a vessel for positive societal change. It was no coincidence that one of the times I saw The Alarm in concert was as the opening act for Bob Dylan, he himself the leader of rock’s first wave of transformational musicians that flourished two decades before The Alarm and their compatriots such as U2. Peters did not wear his heart so much on his sleeve as he thrust it out front for all to see. His music and work were a shared journey, an offer to walk forever by his side.

Peters and The Alarm made unashamedly anthemic music. His was not the calculated, prefabricated, empty howl of artists such as Rage Against the Machine, pretending to decry institutions such as business conglomerates while recording for a record label owned and run by one. Neither was Peters playing to the critics, as The Alarm was never a music press darling. His music and message were strictly for the people; a call for all, regardless of which economic or cultural strata they found themselves in, to find affiliation and identification with the belief that humanity was something worthy of attention. Peters believed that no one reaches higher than when they stoop down to help someone else up. The Alarm’s work was a rallying cry open to all willing to give of themselves.

Mike Peters was not a naive man. Cancer has a way of knocking that out of you. Instead, he was a man of purpose and good humor who understood the game’s nature and didn’t mind playing it for his purposes. The classic example of this came in 2004, when Peters, alongside his compatriots in the reformed Alarm, in which he was the only original member, pranked the entire British music industry by releasing a single under a fictitious band name. He went so far as to employ a young unknown band to lipsync the song for its music video. The ploy worked, as the song hit the UK Top 30 before Peters let everyone in on the joke.

And so Mike Peters has left us, our earthly circle growing smaller even as our future heavenly one grows more complete. Peters leaves his grieving family and friends with a body of work transcending popular music’s normal disposable nature. His music’s raw energy and refusal to abandon hope continue to lift spirits long after its commercial heyday in the 1980s. The Alarm still rings and will always ring across the countryside, a message that is living heritage to the words Paul wrote some 2,000 years ago:

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Godspeed, Mike Peters.

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