Cordyceps Corpse keeps it brutal with ‘Perverse Craving for Rotting Corpses’

Cordyceps Corpse, the buzzy project led by Columbus multi-instrumentalist Nani Porter, plays in the death metal subgenre known as “slamming brutal death metal,” or slam for short. 

Slam is an especially brutish and elemental take on death metal pioneered by bands such as Internal Bleeding and Devourment, and subsequent generations have taken up the challenge of dragging it as deep into the gutter as possible. The signatures of the genre include inhuman vocals, raw guitars in ridiculous drop tunings, gratingly “pingy” snare drums, and gory, taboo-pushing lyrics. Slam is not typically the place you go looking for genre-bending musical nuance, but Cordyceps Corpse isn’t a typical slam band.

“Sometimes I’ll hear something from a genre that’s not brutal death, like I’m listening to Earth, Wind & Fire or something like that, and I’m like, ‘I like how they did that break. What if I just added a bass break into this?’” Porter said. “[I’ll try] Earth, Wind & Fire-style writing, but throw this guttural on it, and the super pingy snare, and let’s see what happens. And sometimes that works.”

Porter started Cordyceps Corpse in 2023, when her roommate at the time encouraged her to post the death metal songs that she was recording in her spare time. At that point, Porter was more versed in making drum & bass and lo-fi hip hop beats, but she’d been itching to make something heavy. “I’ve always wanted to make metal, because guitar has been something I’ve been playing since third grade,” she said. “And this is the most fun I have, making this type of music. I’m really into it. I just really love the really scooped guitars, the gutturals. Something about it just tickles my brain, and I was like, ‘I wanna make that. That’s what I wanna do.’”

Porter’s death metal alter ego has been prolific from the jump. In the first two years of Cordyceps Corpse, she dropped seven singles and EPs, each one more musically accomplished than the last. In 2025, Porter released the project’s debut LP, From Flesh to Fluids, which caught fire in slam circles and was quickly reissued by the tastemakers at Gore House Productions. The idea of writing a full-length album began as a challenge Porter issued to herself to see if she could create a unified body of work after churning out so many shortform releases.

“I wanted to keep it similar – same tone, same guitar tuning for most of the songs, and how I had the mics placed – to make it somewhat similar across the thing when you’re listening to it,” Porter said. “I made maybe 26 songs, and then I was like, ‘This is too much, let me narrow this down.’ And then I found the songs that I felt most fit the idea. When I was making Flesh to Fluids, I was watching a lot of ‘Wrong Turn’ and stuff like that, so I was thinking of a cannibal, backwoods kind of thing.”

The follow-up to From Flesh to Fluids is Perverse Craving for Rotting Corpses, a sophomore level-up that shows off more of Porter’s range while still delivering blow after bludgeoning blow of classic brutal death. Porter says she’s proudest of the strides she’s made as a drummer, and Perverse Craving boasts more interesting patterns and increasingly textured sounds. “I’ve learned more,” she says. “I can add more fills and more breaks and stuff like that. I kind of just want to progress off that. I think the kick was the biggest thing. I realized I need a better trigger sample, so I have a clickier one that kicks through.”

She was also more adventurous in the kinds of influences she allowed to seep in, though they might not be obvious to the casual listener. (Good luck spotting that Earth, Wind & Fire nod.) The song “Ishmael’s Demise” is based around a riff that’s considerably more melodic than typical slam fare, and “Thoracic Bifurcation” is, in Porter’s words, “Kind of stupid, with a lot of time signature changes.” Then there’s “Fermented Remains,” which subtly draws on Porter’s history as an electronic producer.

“There’s definitely some house influences with ‘Fermented,’ where I stopped and started the riff, because I like how [house producers] do those build-ups, and then you finally get the drop,” Porter says. “I was like, ‘I kind of want to do that, but in metal.’”

The gruesome lyrical content of Perverse Craving for Rotting Corpses is one area where Porter insists on remaining true to genre, but even there she’s got her own take on the tropes. In a genre where some of the slimier bands tend to lean on misogyny and gendered violence in their writing, Porter’s very existence as a trans woman in the scene can be read as provocation. She’s comfortable weaponizing that, and she wants to make it clear that she isn’t going anywhere.

“I know so many women and non-binary people and queer people in general that are into this music,” Porter said. “We’ve always just existed in it, and being of that minority group, and being the subject of a lot of the songs, is definitely different. A lot of my lyrics are switched around … so it’s about men. I kind of think of it as, we’re tough, too. We can be in here, and we can talk about it.”