Aswad – Warrior Charge

29th September 1980 · 1980, 1980s, Music, Reggae, UK Reggae

Aswad were the most successful of the UK Reggae bands and this exuberant instrumental, Warrior Charge, was their finest moment.

If the UK’s first reggae band was Matumbi, then Aswad, who came out of Ladbroke Grove a few years later in 1975, were its most successful, notching up a string of crossover hits in the Eighties and Nineties.

They began as a roots reggae band, uniquely charting the second-generation Anglo-Caribbean experience in early songs like Three Babylon, It’s Not Our Wish and the self-explanatory African Children (“in a concrete situation”).

In the mid-Seventies, they took over Matumbi’s role of backing Jamaican reggae artists on UK tours, most notably Burning Spear – an occasion immortalised on a superb 1977 live album recorded at the Rainbow Theatre. I always felt slightly guilty that I preferred them when fronted by guest stars from Jamaica than their own vocalists, Brinsley Forde and Drummie Zeb, and on instrumental albums like A New Chapter Of Dub.

Tracing a career path from roots reggae through to pop crossover material, they were first signed to Island Records, who put out those early tunes before releasing this fantastically uncommercial deep roots instrumental Warrior Charge – featured in the fantastic 1978 film Rockers – full of fat bass, wild sax solos and spacey dub effects.

Another career high was their live set at Meanwhile Gardens during the 1982 Notting Hill Carnival, later released as an album, Live & Direct, which captures them at their rootsy best. They spent the Eighties gradually became poppier, which worked for them, at least in purely commercial terms.

They actually topped the charts with the crossover hit Don’t Turn Around in 1988 and went on to further enrich – and, in my view, embarrass – themselves with increasingly MoR tunes including an Eagles cover and regrettable collaborations with the likes of Sting and Cliff Richard, as well as the irritatingly jolly Shine, another big hit.

At their rootsy best, though – as on this crucial cut – they were incendiary. I still have this 12-inch of Warrior Charge in my collection, credited to Aswad with a shout-out to featured musicians Michael ‘Bami’ Rose on sax, and the trombonist Vin ‘Tromie’ Gordon, the Jamaican music legend responsible for the 1968 Studio One classic Heavenless, one of the first reggae riddims ever recorded.