My People Hold On

"My People Hold On" by Zulu erupts with the genre-fusing fury that has made the Los Angeles band a vital force in the powerviolence and hardcore underground. The track is brutally short and dense, blasting drums and detuned riffs colliding with abrupt tempo shifts, but Zulu's distinction is the soul, gospel, and Black musical heritage they weave through the chaos — sampled spoken-word, melodic interludes, the texture of community memory dropped into a maelstrom. The vocals are a guttural, throat-shredding howl, less lyrics than collective scream, channeling rage and resilience. The title says everything: this is music about Black survival, perseverance against generational violence, a defiant insistence on holding on. It's overtly political hardcore in the tradition of bands who use the form as protest, but Zulu reframes whose story the genre tells. Culturally it's part of a recent wave reclaiming heavy music as a Black space, fusing the spiritual and the savage. Best experienced at punishing volume, in a basement show pit or alone when you need to externalize fury and grief at once. It demands engagement, not background listening — a furious, cathartic, profoundly intentional minute or two that leaves you rattled and somehow uplifted, the sound of a people refusing to be erased.