Zulu

A New Tomorrow

Brief Review: Never heard of Zulu in my life, but the coverart was pretty cool looking, so I went in from there. This album fucks super hard! The riffs and vocals are super punchy and to the point, with each track being less than like 2 minutes, it leads to each track not dragging at all. Also really found the racial themes of these tracks to be really compelling, too! Will say tho, I feel like this album would’ve been so much better if the songs were longer, as unlike something like ... read more

Por mais que tenha amado ambos os populares álbuns "Red Moon In Venus" e "UGLY", não consigo de deixar de ficar triste pela falta de uma melhor recepção para outros ótimos projetos lançados no mesmo dia (03/03) como "A New Tomorrow" da banda Zulu.
"A New Tomorrow" é uma ótima recapitulação da brava história da negritude africana e de todos os seus povos, ou outros emergentes de ... read more

More music like this needs to be made and heard by the masses. The hardcore tracks go hard as fuck, and the various stylistic detours into smoother soul-backed instrumentals make for just as compelling songs, but overall the experience is very disjointed. The hardcore-to-classic R&B sample-back to hardcore-back to sample pattern on the first half of the album felt very gimmicky and disrupted the flow of great tracks that would have packed a lot more punch. Especially when the final track is ... read more

This was an interesting and pretty fun listen! Didn’t know what I was in for, especially with the first track being so different from the rest of the album, I was quite surprised when it immediately went HARD right after haha. This album does seem quite safe for what it’s going for, but I appreciate that the production is great, the vocals are gnarly, the more chill parts are pleasant. Yeah, it’s good, glad I gave it a try.

A super energetic half an hour of heavy guitars and hoarse screaming vocals. The luscious album cover and extremely tranquil opening track lull you into a false view of how this album will sound. Then the Metalcore elements enter on the second track. However, the tranquil nature is kept alive through the occaisonal calm track or outro. The tracks are super short which mean these moments come relatively regularly, creating a purposful and incredibly interesting tonal clash. I'm not really a fan ... read more

Zulu have been on my radar since hearing them at Outbreak Fest last year and I feel so proud of these guys for their debut album, A New Tomorrow. Not only are they bucking the trend in hardcore today, but the way that they are taking their proud roots and creating fantastic, aggressively beautiful music inspired by their background and history is unreal. A New Tomorrow has got it all: brutal riffs, soulful instrumentals, and a whole lot of black pride.

Opener Africa lulls you into a false ... read more

Por quê esse disco se diferencia de outros do Metal? Simplesmente por se importar para uma cultura sendo que a banda é composta por Anqiah Lei como vocalista, Dez Yusuf na guitarra, Braxton Marcellous na guitarra, Satchel Brown no baixo e Cheistome Cadette na bateria; além de serem muito diversos podemos nos debater um discurso em 'Crème de Cassis by Aleisia Miller and Precious Tucker', no fundo um piano denso.

Muita coisa tem pouca duração aqui sendo ... read more

A fantastic metalcore album that I've been long excited for since the first few single releases

This takes you on so many journeys through it's short 28 minute 15 song runtime, every song sounds different yet manages to sound great everytime, the instrumentation is insane
although I admit there's a bit of whiplash of having a rap funk track in the middle of a metalcore album, even if the songs before gave off a funk vibe
And of course the message about racism is always appreciated even if I ... read more

This one has been somewhat on my radar since seeing some really enjoyable live footage from this band. A New Tomorrow isn’t a bad record but I’d like to see the stylistic differences blended more seamlessly. What we have here doesn’t work at all as a cohesive album. Still highly recommend seeing them live on that Show me the body tour they’re on right now. Insane lineup of acts for that ticket price.

When you hear A New Tomorrow, the debut album from Los Angeles hardcore/metalcore band Zulu blaring out of your speakers, they might sound just like any other band in that style, but the fact that the noise is coming from five young black men changes everything. Throughout these powerful and defining songs, you find messages about not just focusing on their pain and suffering, but just as much on their resilience. I also enjoyed that even though a majority of these track hang around under ... read more

I’m thankful this month is off to a good start because music wise these first two months of the year were not at all it.

Equal parts head piercing and also melodic and soulful, it’s a fantastic album. Also love that it’s a Black band, we don’t have enough of those in hardcore scenes. This needs more mainstream exposure fs. Ik the hate5six videos of this band are gonna be wild.

This new Zulu album is finally here! A New Tomorrow is pretty much everything I expected, and maybe a little more... but also, maybe a little less, in certain aspects. This album feels longer than it is, as it's rather dense. It is a rather ambitious album, and therefore does contain elements I don't always agree with. There is a ton of skits/interludes. The actual songs are just plain dope, but this album is slightly hindered by its gimmicks.

White people might feel uncomfortable based on ... read more

On one hand, extremely sporadic and batshit all-over-the-wall headbangers with insanely hard riffs to get hyped and scream to. Each one of the more hardcore metal tracks are extremely short and to the point with the purpose to go extremely nuts to.

On the other hand, the more serene, RnB jazz segments, tribal themes that contrast the main selling point of the record tries to act as a palette cleanser, but sort of wears the record down the more it does these out-of-the-blue interludes that take ... read more

Zulu - A New Tomorrow

Genre: Hardcore
Country: US

Final Verdict: 58% (Pleasant Album)
Yearly Ranking: 151th / 228

Highlight: From Tha Gods To Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUob_IPSEco

Made me think of:
Code Orange
Vein
Turnstile

Well, this is rather weird. I can see that the guys attempted to create something eclectic and minorities in metal should be celebrated but their just doesn't stick. The blend of metalcore and soul or traditional Black music may sounds intriguing but Zulu underachieve. It's not like we've never seen such fusion. Zeal & Ardor's first 2 LPs were amazing. A New Tomorrow however feels really disjointed as soul sections are poorly integrated into the overall soundscape. Zulu just decided they ... read more

For message and concept alone I would’ve rated A New Tomorrow a lot higher. While the heaviest moments of the record definitely go very hard, I just feel that the very sudden mid song genre shifts to old school soul and hip hop cause too much whiplash as a listener, especially in tracks that are mostly under 2 minutes so you don’t even have enough time to fully take in the ideas before they’re changed. By no means a bad album but for me it suffers from trying to fit too much ... read more

2 for the shouts 10 for the excellent samples.

Essential Track - Shine Eternally

A New Tomorrow is an impressive mix of soul and metalcore which even has a great rap track.

Words are hard to describe seeing this type of music played these types of folks with a flavor that is all their own. Production is amazing, the range in vocal styles keeps me on the toes, The message and interludes all play into their live style and the love of sharing those things that make them unique with the hardcore community.

I'd say the only pitfall is their song structure is really diverse and jumpy. Going from groove to groove in unorthodox ways that challenge the traditional ... read more

Enjoyable Metalcore album that has some interesting blends of different genres. I dig it! (Sorry brain empty after Macklemore and Morgan Wallen)

That wasn't bad. The songs are a bit short, but it was something.

I can appreciate what Zulu is going for with fusing hardcore and R&B samples, but as it stands currently I don't think they've found the right balance yet. For me this album needs about 50% more riffs for it to be truly great. At only 26 minutes, the samples almost feel like filler to make the album longer. I know that's not the case, but there's so little meat to this album that I wind up feeling like I'm being forced to wait for more substance rather than being able to enjoy the moments ... read more

Not necessarily bad, but the songs are too short, the shifts in genre jarring and uninspired, there no common thread nor is it justifiably chaotic, its a lot of different sounds shoehorned in together and not done tastefully. The powercore/ hard hitting parts go REALLY hard; and that one old hiphop track was fairly good but beyond that this isnt a very impressive album.

banger , love the contrast between the instrumentals more chilled out prog rock like passages into the some really heavy scream shit , cool spoken word as well , lovely stuff