“Live Today” is Peters’ final video, shot on a northern English beach at dawn
Mike Peters, the Welsh musician who spent over four decades as the frontline vocalist and songwriter of The Alarm, died on April 29, 2025, aged 66, following 31 years of intermittent cancer treatment. The posthumous album Transformation, recorded during the last six months of his life, is scheduled for release on May 29, 2026, via Twenty First Century Recordings and Virgin Music Group.
Artist: The Alarm
Release Date: 2026-05-29
Genres: Alternative Rock, New Wave, Post-punk
Label: Twenty First Century Recordings, Virgin Music Group
Description: The Alarm's Transformation, recorded in Mike Peters' final months, releases May 29 on Twenty First Century Recordings/Virgin Music Group.
The album’s origins trace to October 7, 2024. Sessions continued through various interruptions until the evening of January 15, 2025, the night before Peters began CAR-T therapy at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, a treatment targeting Richter’s Syndrome, an aggressive lymphoma that had developed from his chronic lymphocytic leukemia diagnosis. The 12-track record was completed in that compressed window.
The latest single, “Live Today,” released April 8, 2026, was filmed on a beach in the north of England in the days immediately preceding Peters’ hospital admission. Jules Peters, his wife and bandmate, has described the shoot as taking place at sunrise, with the tour bus proceeding directly to the Christie afterward. The video is Peters’ last on record.
Transformation opens with “New Life,” originally conceived as a post-recovery announcement. First single “Chimera,” released on January 23, 2025, the same day CAR-T therapy began, drew on the Greek mythological figure to frame the cellular reality of the treatment: the procedure would introduce a second type of DNA into Peters’ bloodstream, making him biologically chimeric in a clinical sense. Other tracks include “Outlier,” “One In A Million,” and the closing ballad “Love Makes Love.”
Peters was born on February 25, 1959, in Prestatyn, North Wales, and grew up in Rhyl. He formed a series of bands with childhood acquaintances, beginning with The Toilets in 1977 following a formative encounter with the Sex Pistols in Chester, then Seventeen, before settling on The Alarm in 1981. The band relocated to London, signed to IRS Records, and built their audience by opening for U2 on the 1983 War tour. Their highest-charting UK single, “Sixty Eight Guns,” reached number 17 that same year. By 1988 they were opening for Bob Dylan at US dates, and Peters was twice invited onstage to perform “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” with Dylan. The Alarm broke up on June 30, 1991, when Peters announced his departure mid-concert at the Brixton Academy. He relaunched the band in the early 2000s and continued recording through to Transformation, with albums including Equals (2018), Sigma (2019), Omega (2021), and Forwards all charting in the UK Rock top ten. Peters was appointed MBE in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to cancer care. Between 2011 and 2013 he also fronted Big Country alongside his Alarm commitments.
Peters was first diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1995 and subsequently with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 2005. Alongside Jules, he co-founded Love Hope Strength, a cancer charity with a particular focus on stem cell donor registration, conducting campaigns at concerts and on mountain expeditions internationally; the charity has added over 400,000 people to the global stem cell registry.
Transformation is available for presale via the band’s official webstore.
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