A New Tomorrow

A New Tomorrow is the debut full-length studio album by American hardcore punk band Zulu, released on March 3, 2023, by Flatspot Records. It has received positive reviews from critics for the band's ability to mix various genres and moods and has appeared on several best-albums lists for the first six months of 2023. Reception Editors at Bandcamp highlighted this as Album of the Day, with staffer John Morrison writing that the music "pushes the volume and energy to the max" and the songs "celebrate the power, beauty, and resilience of Black people everywhere". Andrew Sacher of BrooklynVegan included this among the notable releases of the week, writing that while the songs "are informed by pain" the album is "so much deeper and more vast and more celebratory than that". Olly Thomas of Kerrang! rated this release a 4 out of 5, characterizing it as "a glorious celebration of black musical history and a powerful charge into its future". At The Line of Best Fit, Ims Taylor scored A New Tomorrow an 8 out of 10, calling the band "brilliant, vicious, breakneck hardcore" and this album "dark, forceful, and ready to leave you with ringing ears and shaking bones", summing up "you’re left with the impression there’s nothing ZULU can’t do". Stephen Hill of Metal Hammer gave this release 4.5 out of 5 stars, calling it "the classic sound of punk rock, hardcore and powerviolence reimagined and rebred with both the liquid grooves and righteous protest polemic of the golden era of funk and soul" and "a wild ride, as Zulu can be destructively heavy one moment and gloriously euphoric and inventive the next". No Ripcords Juan Edgardo Rodriguez rated A New Tomorrow an 8 out of 10, opining "there are many layers tucked within the half-hour-long A New Tomorrow, though it's the most straightforward hardcore tracks that hit the hardest". Writing for Pitchfork, Lindsay Temple rated this release a 7.8 out of 10 and stated that"the dynamic force of powerviolence isn’t the loudest part of A New Tomorrow: It’s the way the album juxtaposes the sludge and the shrieks with songs performed in styles popularized by Black people" and that the band "make clear that working within genre lines is far less meaningful than a commitment to the history of Black music, Black love, and Black might". Several best-of lists published around the mid-year of 2023 included A New Tomorrow.