Steel Pulse sometimes gets a bum rap for being too “pop” or radio friendly.  I could not disagree more.  I am a roots fan to the core, and I own everything Steel Pulse has released.  Listen to their first 4 albums and tell me they are not a roots band.  David Hinds writes some of the hardest lyrics you will ever hear in a reggae tune.  Take one of my favorites, “Unseen Guest,” which opens my favorite album, Tribute To The Martyrs:

“Down in the dungeon
I heard them constructing, the scaffold
Where . . . I’ll be lynched aloft high
The thoughts of me to die
Rocking like a pendulum,
Anyway it does’nt matter cause
I’ll be swinging to the rhythms of heh.
Jah Jah watch over I”

And I could go on for days quoting brutal lyrics like that.  Much respect David Hinds and the Steel Pulse crew!  They will always get pure love from the MIDNIGHT RAVER BLOG…

Enjoy this amazing performance from 1983.

Steel Pulse Live at Paradiso Amsterdam
26 November 1983
Good FM Recording.

01-George Jackson
02-Biko
03-Blues Dance Raid
04-Soldiers
05-Rally Round The Flag
06-Handsworth Revolution
07-Riot
08-Chant A Psalm
09-Sound System
10-Drug Squad
11-Ravers
12-Man No Sober

Album review from New Musical Express March 6, 1982

1982-03-06steelpulse