Korn’s new dubstep collaboration album The Path of Totality recently debuted in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, but for those who can’t get enough of guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer, the debut album by his side project Fear and the Nervous System is out now.
Shaffer went to great pains to distinguish Fear and the Nervous System from Korn, telling I Heart Guitar, “I think people are expecting a lot of Korn-sort of sounding riffs, and I purposefully used a lot of six-string guitars – all six string guitars actually – on the record, and alternate tunings and different things to make sure I wasn’t sounding like that.”
Shaffer used many un-Korn-like instruments on the record, including a baritone guitar, a Gibson Thunderbird, and a Gibson Les Paul BFG. “It’s really cool,” Shaffer said. “It’s got a humbucker in the bridge position and then a P90 in the neck position. I used that on a lot of the tracks.”
Although Shaffer would like to take the outfit out on the road, that won’t happen until the various members can coordinate their schedules. The lineup includes drummer Brooks Wackerman, Repeater vocalist Steve Krolikowski and Faith No More bass player Billy Gould. “We’ll see what happens,” Shaffer said. “We’ll just let people kinda discover it on their own. Really, the hardest thing about touring is scheduling, because everybody who played on the record has other band obligations.”
