“Must I only share my pain?“
Having made a splash with their EPs Our Day Will Come and My People… Hold On, Los Angeles based hardcore/powerviolence group Zulu are looking to further carve into the space they’ve created for themselves amongst the hardcore scene with their upcoming debut studio album A New Tomorrow. A band I had yet to properly dive into until I was presented with this album, Zulu immediately captivated me with their social commentary-laced lyricism and unique blend of hardcore infused with predominantly Black genres such as soul, funk, reggae, and hip-hop.
A New Tomorrow opens with “Africa”, a gorgeous instrumental performance featuring Aisha Burns on violin and Precious Tucker on piano. If you were unfamiliar with Zulu up to this point, the beautiful instrumentation of the intro track might lull you into a false sense of security. This is swiftly broken by the end, however, with the violin, piano, and percussion swelling to a crescendo before drummer and vocalist Christine Cadette abruptly cuts in to properly kick the record off—“ayo, it’s Zulu in this bitch! What y’all niggas on?”
The album moves quickly from there, jumping into “For Sista Humphrey”. Opening with a flurry of cymbals and the dissonant guitar tandem of Braxton Marcellous and Dez Yusuf, the track progresses through a couple of different paces before the final twenty seconds gives way to the first of many samples used across A New Tomorrow. The frequent tempo changes across tracks sporting short runtimes are a staple of the powerviolence genre—but the frequent use and incorporation of samples of music from predominantly Black genres is all Zulu. In this song’s case the sample is a slower, ethereal soul cut that allows for a brief respite before the next track begins.
Pure aggression from the jump, the transition into “Our Day Is Now” is whiplash-inducing, with vocalist Anaiah Lei and Cadette taking turns trading off screaming vocal sections over the blistering pace set for the first part of the song. Before long, however, a slow, sludgy breakdown section ushers in 80s reggae cut “Push Come To Shove” by Freddie McGregor, overlaid with a cacophony of live audience sounds.
The onslaught of brutal vocals then returns with “Music To Driveby”, the title of the track a reference to the 1992 album and song of the same name from gangsta rap outfit Compton’s Most Wanted. Lei and Cadette’s alternating screams are once again powerful and cathartic, yet short lived, with the bulk of the track turning into a sample of Curtis Mayfield’s “We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue”. First known for his work as part of Chicago soul group The Impressions—he single-handedly wrote the group’s most well-known song “People Get Ready”, deemed the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement by Martin Luther King Jr.—Mayfield’s solo work also frequently touched on political and social issues, particularly the struggles of African-Americans. The sampling of “We The People” here feels meaningful, its intent powerful, and the use of the soulful sample on a track that pulls its name from an iconic West Coast hip-hop album is just one example of how Zulu can take an amalgam of different influences to create a sound that is so uniquely theirs and powerful in its own right.
Moving onto the first of the album’s singles, “Fakin’ Tha Funk (You Get Did)” was released towards the end of 2022 accompanied by a black and white music video filmed by Yusuf and Lei. Another track whose title pays homage to a classic hip-hop track, “Fakin’ The Funk” by Main Source was released in 1992 and called out the “wack MCs” of the time for their lack of authenticity and for being commercial sell outs. A modern spiritual successor to those initial themes of inauthenticity, Zulu’s take on “Fakin’ Tha Funk” calls out those who appropriate and exploit Black culture for their own personal gains without having to live through the struggle of actually being Black. The final lines of the heavy hitting track sum it up succinctly—”everybody wants to be a nigga til it’s time to be”.
The second single from A New Tomorrow immediately follows up the first. “Where I’m From” was released at the start of 2023 accompanied by a music video that serves as a direct tribute to A Tribe Called Quest’s iconic posse cut “Scenario”. Featuring vocal performances from Pierce Gordon (of Soul Glo) and Obioma Ugonna (of Playytime), as well as a music video cameo appearance from comedian Eric Andre, “Where I’m From” makes the most of its runtime as one of the relatively longer cuts off of A New Tomorrow. The front half of the song sees Lei and Cadette trading off lines as they are wont to do, while the back half features Gordon and Ugonna doing the same. “Where I’m From” is additionally bolstered by a prominent bass performance from Satchel Brown, with the more open sections of the song allowing his tone to really shine through.
Nearing the midpoint of the record, “Shine Eternally” is one of the biggest curveballs thrown on A New Tomorrow. Clocking in at just over three minutes long, the instrumental track is smooth and atmospheric, falling more into the realm of acid jazz and psychedelic funk and soul than it does hardcore. Another one of the longer cuts on the album, “Shine Eternally” offers a nice change of pace and a few minutes of contemplative solace amongst the faster-paced, more aggressive tracks that dominate the rest of the album. The instrumental is immediately followed by “Must I Only Share My Pain”. Located at the heart of A New Tomorrow, the interlude is a brief but poignant twenty nine seconds of piano overlaid with the repeated question “must I only share my pain?” As necessary as the expression of the pain and anguish faced by the Black community is, the recognition and celebration of the community’s strengths and triumphs is just as important and worthy of acknowledgement, and is a point that Zulu works to hammer home throughout the record with a high degree of success.
In contrast to the two tracks preceding them, both “Lyfe Az A Shorty Shun B So Ruff” and “From Tha Gods To Earth” quickly pick things back up with some heaviest vocal moments on the album, coupled with sludgy bass tones and some breakneck riffing and drumming. One of my favorite musical moments on the entire album comes in the form of “Lyfe Az A Shorty Shun B So Ruff”’s slow and punishing breakdown leading into a sample of Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted And Black”, while “From Tha Gods To Earth” features my favorite tandem vocal performance from Lei and Cadette thus far, with both of them pushing the bounds of emotion and aggression with their performances on this track in particular.
Slowing things down again, “Crème De Cassis By Aleisia Miller & Precious Tucker” sees the return of both poet Aleisia Miller and pianist Precious Tucker. While Precious Tucker features on A New Tomorrow’s intro track “Africa”, Aleishia Miller features on “Blackcurrant”, the intro track from Zulu’s 2020 EP My People… Hold On. A spoken word piece over jangly and jazzy piano instrumentals, and evoking feminist messaging akin to yet another West Coast hip-hop classic in 2Pac’s “Keep Ya Head Up”, “Blackcurrant” is a testament from Miller as a Black woman who stands “at the intersection of racism and sexism”. It should be noted that crème de cassis is a sweet liqueur made from blackcurrants, dark colored berries also known as cassis. With this knowledge in mind, Miller’s return on “Crème De Cassis” can more clearly be seen as a direct followup to “Blackcurrant”, with the tracks’ titles bringing forth symbolism in the vein of making lemonade when life gives you lemons. Whereas “Blackcurrant” is specific to the struggles faced by Black women, “Crème De Cassis” has Miller revisiting the message at the heart of A New Tomorrow—”must I only share my pain?” Miller and Tucker’s performances here are moving and impassioned, with Miller closing out the poem by delivering one of my favorite lines across the entire project with “why is Black discourse always about precipitation, while ignoring the sweet scent of petrichor after rain?”
The spoken word interlude smoothly transitions into the third and final single from A New Tomorrow, “We’re More Than This”. A surprising jazz-infused hip-hop cut that sees guitarist Dez Yusuf taking the reins on vocals, his flow is smooth as he dances across jazzy instrumentals, recounting past traumas and while detailing how moving past them has made him stronger. Another welcome change of pace, it is clear now more than ever that Zulu is a band determined to not let themselves be pigeonholed into being just a hardcore band. Instead, they continually push the bounds of their creativity, moving across various genre spectrums and blurring the lines between them in order to speak their truths and tell their stories in ways that feel unique and authentic to them.
Not letting the more hopeful cuts from A New Tomorrow pull too far away from the the sound Zulu is known for, however, the violence-inducing energy returns in full force with the oldest cut from the album, a rerecording of “52 Fatal Strikes” from Zulu’s 2019 EP Our Day Will Come, featuring vocalist Paris Jackson of Truth Cult. The title of this track is pulled from—you guessed it—GZA’s classic hip-hop track “Duel Of The Iron Mic”, or more specifically, his fellow Wu-Tang member Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s hook from said track, “duel of the iron mic! It’s the fifty-two fatal strikes!”. A track as brutal as the fighting style it’s named after, “52 Fatal Strikes” is topped off by a heady and prominent guitar lead that helps usher in a pummeling breakdown that smoothly transitions into penultimate track “Divine Intervention”, which doubles down on the previously introduced themes of denouncing cultural appropriation presented on “Fakin’ Tha Funk (You Get Did)”, albeit a bit more aggressively this time. While Cadette doesn’t employ her screams here as she has throughout the record thus far, her spoken word shouting over the soundscape of dissonant guitars feels all the more impactful for it. “Everybody wanna be a nigga, but nobody wanna look like me!” is direct and to the point, continuing to call out the hypocrisies of those who exploit Black culture.
Clocking in at a bit over four minutes long, “Who Jah Bless No One Curse” is both the longest track and the grand finale of A New Tomorrow. The first minute and a half of the closer carries on the energy from “Divine Intervention” but with a guitar soundscape much closer to post-hardcore than anything put forth by Zulu thus far. “Who Jah Bless No One Curse” then opens up into a spacious and gorgeous instrumental section that further pulls away from any of the sounds established on A New Tomorrow by moving into a more alternative and post-rock space. The switch up provides a stark contrast to the intensity from the beginning of the track, allowing the end of the record some more breathing room before fading into a sparse hand drum punctuating an ensemble group performance of the chorus from “Small Axe” by reggae legends Bob Marley & The Wailers. A song about people uniting in the face of a greater evil—”if you are the big tree, we are the small axe, ready to cut you down”—”Small Axe” and “Who Jah Bless No One Curse” helps bring A New Tomorrow back full circle to end the record on a more hopeful and inspiring note.
Profound, compelling, unapologetically Black, and proud—A New Tomorrow is a dizzying and masterful blend of hardcore punk, powerviolence, and the many predominantly Black genres and influences it references and pulls from. Zulu flexes their versatility across their debut album by taking risks and reaping the rewards, expertly contrasting and balancing the anger and pain inherent to the Black experience with the joys and triumphs, all the while celebrating and paying homage to a number of iconic figures and points in Black music history. A New Tomorrow is about as strong of a debut album as it gets, and with it, Zulu have proven themselves as a force to be reckoned with and ones to watch in the modern hardcore scene.
9/10
A New Tomorrow is out this Friday March 3rd via Flatspot Records. Zulu can currently be found on tour across North America as support for Show Me The Body, along with Jesus Piece, Scowl, and TRiPPJONES. You can find merch and pre-orders for A New Tomorrow, as well as tour dates and links to purchase tickets, here.