City Morgue Set to Raise Hysteria in Miami One Last Time

Listening to hardcore Brooklyn duo City Morgue feels like a pounding head rush with a jaw so clenched you can feel your teeth grinding into your gums. There's a barbarous sense of urgency from members ZillaKami and SosMula as they scrape their vocal cords and rip apart steely metal samples under hi-hats and 808s.

If you're scared, go to church.

For what appears to be their final tour, the trap-metal misfits are making their way to the Ground on Thursday, August 18, less than a month after breaking necks with their set at Rolling Loud.

Physically, the similarities of both members start and end with a scar tattoo on one eye each. The braids on SosMula's head snake down to his chest, every inch of his olive skin is plastered with tattoos, and opulent dark purple grills often coat his teeth. ZillaKami's crown of semi-freeform dreads swing like tentacles when he performs. His own custom grills are jagged and fanged and he has a fair amount of tats himself.

When City Morgue's debut album, City Morgue Vol 1: Hell or High Water, dropped in 2018, the rap world was crawling with overzealous newcomers cosplaying rockstar personas with hair dye and half-assed mosh pits at live shows. This wasn't that.
"Nuka Cola" is a microcosm of the brazen blend of trap, horrorcore, and metal that Zilla and Sos chewed up and spat out across the record's 14 tracks. The whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a houseful of assault-grade weapons and cocaine bricks in a room with bullet holes in the wall. Maybe that sounds grim? Just a little bit. But the music's tight.

ZillaKami's opening lines of the intro track "Caligula" mirror the carnage of its namesake, a notoriously heinous ancient Roman emperor.

"Aye, black metal clash in the pit/That’s when it blast, lay your heart in abyss/Make that black metal cause an eclipse/That’s when it blast, lay your ass in a basket."

Since it spawned in 2016, City Morgue has all but abandoned the sound they created to build their following. The duo's palette of influences ranges from Slipknot and Title Fight to DMX and Tyler, the Creator to Radiohead and Pixies. Even then, their modernized take on nu-metal feels entirely singular and stands out as a precursor to the cultural overlap of rap and rock in recent years.
City Morgue's later works, including two more volumes in the self-titled series, feature collaborations with hip-hop standouts Denzel Curry and IDK, as well as XXXTentacion acolytes Nascar Aloe and Jasiah. The 2020 mixtape Toxic Boogaloo boasts some of City Morgue's best production. Peep the ethereally resonant guitar loop on ZillaKami's "Yellow Piss" or the spine-tingling synths on SosMula's "Yakuza" for reference.

Other staples in their discography like "Neck Brace" are enough to split your eardrums open. These guys make bangers in their sleep.

If there's a time to catch on to the hype, it's really now or never.

City Morgue. 8 p.m. Thursday, August 18, at the Ground, 34 NE 11th St., Miami; thegroundmiami.com. Tickets cost $25 to $100 via ticketweb.com.