James "Munky" Shaffer — born in the United States on 6 June 1970 — is Korn's founding guitarist and one of those directly responsible for inventing nu metal. The contribution is technical and datable. Together with Brian Welch he adopted seven-string guitars tuned to a very low register, at a time when almost no one in rock was using them. That changed everything: the notes fall below the range of a conventional guitar, the riffs lose melodic definition and gain bodily weight, and the result sounds closer to percussion than to harmony. The second decision was a negative one: Korn eliminated guitar solos. In a genre that had spent two decades cultivating virtuosity, that was almost a provocation. The space left over was filled with texture — effects, harmonics, noises and short phrases that work as commentary, not as display. That set of choices was copied by practically all American metal at the turn of the millennium, from Limp Bizkit to Slipknot. He is, alongside Jonathan Davis, the only member present throughout the band's entire history, including the period when Welch was away.
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