Twenty minutes were enough for Zulu to establish themselves as one of the most stimulating propositions in American hardcore. A New Tomorrow, the debut album of the Los Angeles band led by Anaiah Lei, caught critics by surprise — an 88 average across eight reviews — and for good reason: rarely has a record combined so naturally the fury of powerviolence and the pride of a history.
For Zulu do not merely make a hardcore record: they make a record about the African-American experience, about memory, anger and hope. Between the detonations — of a brutality and brevity typical of the genre — slip soul, funk and gospel interludes, voice samples, breathing spaces that give the whole the shape of an inhabited collage. The press unanimously hails this audacity: here violence becomes language, and language, affirmation.
What makes A New Tomorrow so striking is precisely this refusal of generic purity. Zulu summon the hardcore heritage without imprisoning themselves in it, inject the richness of an entire culture, and transform a genre often perceived as monolithic into a moving space of expression.
Verdict: 8.5. A debut that far exceeds its modest running time: dense, proud, necessary. In twenty minutes, Zulu brought a history into hardcore.
