Throughout 1974, Hawkwind heavily toured the UK, Europe and North America with their set being composed predominantly from that year's Hall of the Mountain Grill album.
Unusually for them, no new material had been introduced with the exception of some Michael Moorcock poems based on his Elric fictional character, which appeared on the 1974 live album The 1999 Party.
Given that the band owed one final single to United Artists to conclude their recording contract, during a mid-tour break they entered Olympic Studios on 5 and 6 January where they recorded Brock's "Kings of Speed" (which featured lyrics written by Moorcock originally intended for inclusion on his New Worlds Fair album), Lemmy's "Motorhead" and House's "Spiral Galaxy".
On resuming their UK tour, Dave Brock expressed disillusionment with the band's popularity commenting that "it's getting to be like a war", preferring his life with his wife Sylvie and their two children on their ten-acre Devon farm, trading under an alias in a community which knew nothing of his association with rock music.
Of the forthcoming Eternal Champion project, Brock revealed that he wanted Arthur Brown for the title role, and it would be "a complete fantasy trip on every level... and if we did it, that would be the end [of Hawkwind]".
At the beginning of the year, Turner, House, Powell and King had contributed to Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix's New Worlds Fair, which also featured a guest appearance from Brock.
In April, Moorcock, House and Turner contributed to the recording of Robert Calvert's Lucky Leif and the Longships, produced by Brian Eno and arranged by Rudolph.
"The Golden Void" segues from "Assault and Battery", and the two songs are often performed live as a pair as on the albums Palace Springs (1991) and Canterbury Fayre 2001.
"The Wizard Blew His Horn", "Standing at the Edge" and "Warriors" are Michael Moorcock poems based on his Eternal Champion literary figure.
[9] Live versions of the song appear on the albums Choose Your Masques: Collectors Series Volume 2 (1982), The Friday Rock Show Sessions (1986) and Canterbury Fayre 2001.
"[10][11] "Spiral Galaxy 28948" is a Simon House instrumental, the title being his date of birth (28 September 1948), except his birthday is actually 29 August 1948 - a typo mixup between '289' and '298'.
The original album sleeve unfolds into a large shield-shape, revealing that the silhouetted Warrior is standing at the edge of an apparently bottomless chasm.
Allan Jones in Melody Maker (10 May 1975) was critical in his review of the album despite it being "probably Hawkwind's most professional record" due to the advance in their "technical proficiency", specifically the contributions of Simon House.
The compositions are in the "standard Hawkwind traditions of sweeping synthesiser passages contrasting ethereal space with the violence of monotonous bass and rhythm guitar", and of the poems he says "If Moorcock feels qualified to describe any of these pieces as poetry, then that's his problem" and that they are delivered "with all the emotion of Davros being exterminated by renegade Daleks".
[14] Geoff Barton in Sounds assessed it as "includ[ing] most of their traditional characteristics (leaden guitar, ritualistic chanting, wailing moogs, SF lyrics) but in a much more mature and varied setting", and that "Simon House's influence is strongly felt" making it "rather fuller, more interesting than usual".
Warriors is a different musical thing because it’s Simon House’s first real contribution: on Hall of the Mountain Grill he was too new to be able to have that much influence, and now, of course we’ve got Alan as a second drummer, which has meant a lot of changes.
In May 2013, Cherry Red reissued the album, along with a new stereo and 5.1 mix by Steven Wilson, on the Atomhenge label managed by Esoteric Recordings.