ALBUM REVIEW: A New Tomorrow – Zulu
Last year it was SOUL GLO; the year before that it was TURNSTILE; this year it absolutely has to be ZULU. If you listen to just one hardcore record in all of 2023 let it be this one. A New Tomorrow is the debut full-length from the Los Angeles five-piece, and its arrival is much-anticipated in the wake of the band’s excellent first EPs. 2019’s Our Day Will Come and 2020’s My People… Hold On will have set high expectations for anyone who heard them, and yet here the band exceed them entirely.
At the heart of this record – quite literally in fact – sits a question, a challenge even, that has inspired ZULU to move beyond common and justified expressions of rage at the mistreatment of the Black community and instead towards a celebration of Black triumph, individuality and creativity. It is no accident at all that right at the centre of the tracklist sits a piece titled Must I Only Share My Pain – a collection of voices repeating that very question over the delicate sparkle of a piano and a few unobtrusive swells and textures. The same idea is fleshed out even further in Créme De Cassis By Aleisia Miller & Precious Tucker, in which Miller follows up her EP-opening appearance on My People… with a poem that strikingly concludes, “Why is Black discourse always about precipitation while ignoring the sweet scent of petrichor after rain?”.
The greatest success of A New Tomorrow then is just how well the music reflects this spirit of celebration, with the band not only rounding out tracks with samples from the likes of CURTIS MAYFIELD and NINA SIMONE, but also diving headlong into genres far removed from their primary dealings in powerviolence and hardcore. Seventh track Shine Eternally sees them nailing a laid-back funk style, for instance, the band refusing to hurry through a three-minute runtime that makes this the second longest song on the record; while recent single We’re More Than This eases into chilled-out hip-hop with a deftly-rapped verse from guitarist Dez Yusuf. Executed as confidently and comfortably as they are, moments like these never feel tacked on or phoned in, with each stitch woven very intentionally into a rich tapestry that celebrates Blackness, and Black music, in many of its diverse forms.
Make no mistake however, there is still anger here. Even if you could lay aside its powerful themes and impressive genre-hopping, A New Tomorrow would still be a top drawer powerviolence record. Lead single Fakin’ Tha Funk (You Get Did) seethes with rage at the notion that “Everyone wants to be Black, but nobody really wants to be Black”, its message hammered home via the brutish chugs and fierce vocal trade-offs that remain some of ZULU’s sharpest tools, and a sentiment echoed even more unflinchingly in the penultimate track Divine Intervention. Fifth track Where I’m From is similarly incendiary, its defiant emphasis of “We ain’t going nowhere” elevated by guest appearances from Pierce Jordan of SOUL GLO and Obioma Ugonna of PLAYYTIME in further proof of the communal and collaborative feel at the heart of A New Tomorrow.
It is also telling that even when ZULU do stick to what you might call their primary lanes of powerviolence and hardcore, they can’t help but push at the edges. Ninth track Lyfe Az A Shorty Shun B So Ruff borrows liberally from metalcore, for example, while From Tha Gods To Earth which follows somehow folds feral blasting into something altogether more mournful and melodic within less than a minute and a half. And then there’s closer Who Jah Bless No One Curse; the album’s longest track and arguably its crowning moment, it weaves raging metallic hardcore into a genuinely beautiful melodic fade out before wrapping things up with a triumphant take on BOB MARLEY’s Small Axe. Beauty, brutality, community – if you’re looking for a microcosm of all that makes this record so brilliant, this is the best you’ll find.
It is deeply fitting that the album concludes with the repeated lyrics of “If you are the big tree / We are the small axe / Ready to cut you down”. They speak to something of the defiance and the boldness contained within this record that makes it impossible to mistake A New Tomorrow for anything other than a masterpiece. On every level this album challenges the notion of what one might expect from a band like ZULU, from the way they approach discourse around Blackness in America, all the way through to the manner in which they refuse to conform to the powerviolence box one might initially put them in. A New Tomorrow has dawned, and it absolutely belongs to ZULU.
Rating: 9/10
A New Tomorrow is set for release on March 3rd via Flatspot Records.
Follow ZULU on Instagram.