photography by Lolita Eno
styling by Peri Rosenzweig
interview by Oliver Kupper
From the 1960s through the 1980s, the Soviets launched a fleet of probes toward Venus in what became the legendary Venera program—it was the first time human-made machines captured and returned images and sounds from another planet. What they revealed was staggering: a furnace-world of sulphuric skies, crushing pressure, and an atmosphere as brutal as it is apocalyptic. Drawing from that legacy, the experimental duo Venera—Korn guitarist and co-founder James “Munky” Shaffer and filmmaker/composer Chris Hunt—conjure a synth-driven cosmos just as mysterious and merciless. Their music is a psychological hymn to interplanetary Venusian travel, a soundtrack for drifting through toxic mists and colliding with the planet’s hostile refusal of organic life. But it is also something closer: an original score for our age of unraveling, a psychic reverberation of a society at the edge of rupture. Their sophomore album, EXINFINITE (out September 2025 on PAN), featuring the spectral voices of FKA twigs, Chelsea Wolfe, and Dis Fig, plunges deeper than their 2023 debut—heavier, darker, and more unrelenting. Shaffer’s guitar riffs—instrumental in shaping Korn’s signature sound—mutate here into foreboding, unbound chord progressions. Hunt, through his singular worldbuilding of sound and visceral pulsations, conjures soundscapes that shift from the eerily spectral to a violent primordium. Together, they navigate a shared sonic language, exploring the liberating force of experimentation and the transformative power of collaboration. The result is a nightmarish, chthonic vision—at once beautiful and orchestral. In the following conversation, Shaffer and Hunt delve into the origins of Venera, which began with an early studio session during work with Xhoana X and was further sparked when Korn commissioned Hunt to create pre-show music for their 2022 Requiem Tour.
OLIVER KUPPER: I want to start with the inception of Venera, which began around 2022 in Los Angeles when you were both recording with Xhoana X. Can you talk about the beginnings of your collaboration?
JAMES “MUNKY” SHAFFER: We needed somebody to design pre-show music for Korn’s Requiem Tour. He and I had already been working together, so I knew right away that Chris is very talented as a filmmaker and in creating sound design. During the Korn tour, Chris and I were already diving into some pre-recorded materials that we had. We went through the sequencing of the first Venera record and finalized some of the first recordings. I don't think we even had a label at that point.
CHRIS HUNT: From there, James and I got back together in LA and we really started to go down the rabbit hole together.
KUPPER: Chris, can you talk about what drew you into this sonic collaboration?
HUNT: James and I share a mutual love and language with which we communicate to one another sonically. In this record, there's a density and an intensity to what we both are drawn to in terms of sound. Our friendship and collaboration is an extension of that landscape. It's these very general kinds of genre terms, I guess. But there are certainly components of soundtrack stuff, ambient music, and part heavy music. I didn't necessarily grow up a huge Korn person, or even a huge metal person, but I always had an affinity for noise music and different heavier music. There's this nexus or a matrix of those elements, sounds, and aesthetics that were very common to both of us and still are.
KUPPER: Can you take me through your collaborative process? What does that experience look like in the studio?
SHAFFER: It's so much fun. Chris will grab a few pieces of equipment, whether there's a drum machine, a small synth, or a desktop synth. I'll get my guitar with a couple of my favorite pedals, because I'm always looking for new sounds to take me into another world outside the guitar, even though that's my medium. Then, we'll get together in the studio. We did a lot of stuff at my old studio in downtown LA. We'll kind of start slowly, dipping our toes into some sounds, and we'll look at each other and be like, yeah, that's cool, let's go with this. We don't talk about tempo or keys a lot right off the cuff. It comes from improvising and finding a common path, letting that dictate where it goes; we each let the other pull us back and forth. One of the things I love that Chris and I do is that intensity and density he mentioned, where comfort can grow from this discomfort. If I’m in a bad mood and something negative happens, I would only see this darkness. I think that's the beauty of some of the things we recorded—when you listen, you can feel a certain tone, and it can be this beautiful noise.
HUNT: This tension is an interesting way to describe it. For the past five years, every time we've gotten together has been equally joyful, inspiring, and productive. On one side of the spectrum, in terms of how we work and explore our practice, it’s a very easy, unfolding, joyful kind of flow. On the other side, I take our recorded materials and obsess over them to a very granular detail. I’ll take one bar at a time and identify clusters of materials like they’re pieces of a puzzle. Then, we talk about what the puzzle needs to be and start putting the pieces together. It feels very fulfilling. There's a lot of inspiration and joy behind doing that work, but it's also a lot of labor.
SHAFFER: Chris has this really unique ability to listen on a macro level. You know, when you're looking at something and on the surface it’s not so interesting. But when you look at it under a microscope, you start to see all these textures, this interesting landscape, and you start to expand on it. He's really great at creating a whole world within a world. It's one of the reasons why I love working with him.
KUPPER: It's very rare to meet somebody that you have this creative synergy with.
SHAFFER: Definitely. When we first started to record, we were having so much fun. The satisfaction of having no boundaries—there’s no guardrails when we record, no box we need to fit in. We’re just creating from complete artistic passion and creativity, not for a single on the radio. There’s an openness and freedom to that. It’s very rare to me. I’ve worked with several people through the years, but except for the band, Chris is the only one I’ve had this connection with on a creative level. We share the same creative vocabulary.
KUPPER: Do you feel like all that freedom was jarring after years of being in a band that was forced to produce hits to satisfy a record label?
SHAFFER: It’s a relief. There's a lotof pressure that I don't have any more. I feel liberated.
HUNT: We have our own language. We hope that it exists in a different space than Korn’s music does. Obviously, with the utmost respect and appreciation for that work, it’s amazing and legendary, but the language of the music here is just a little different. For us, a lot of it is driven by the process of exploring.
SHAFFER: When I'm working with the guys in the band, I'll write something at home and take it in and we’ll check it out together and build on it. When Chris and I are working, we want to discover where this experiment will lead us, we want to discover what grows in the lab.
KUPPER: The language is fascinating—you’re teasing the album with striking, dark, poetic texts by Amy Ireland. Can you talk about the textual and visual language behind it?
HUNT: Generally, it functions in two disparate but also harmonious ways. On a simple level, I just wanted an interesting language to accompany what we share about the music during the release process, publicity, and social media. Because so much of these processes are tied to the social media landscape, I’d much rather have another texture or layer we care about—something that helps fill out the story of the music. Then there’s the other part: using text. Imagery or text isn’t particularly new, but finding people connected to the world we feel the music lives in, who speak a similar language, is. With this, we’re letting them exist in that world in a very open way while adding a layer of their own—either narrative or an expansion of the concepts we’re exploring. In the most recent work, it’s Amy Ireland. She’s such a brilliant thinker and writer. I know her work through xenofeminism and her connection to CCRU [Cybernetic Culture Research Unit] in the UK.
KUPPER: You guys are bringing in Dis Fig, FKA Twigs, and Chelsea Wolfe. How does that process work, reaching out to these people and collaborating with these other musicians?
SHAFFER: When we are recording the songs and Chris is digging through, he will suggest things like, maybe this track will be interesting with vocals on it, and maybe it could be a female voice because it feels feminine. Then, we come up with a wishlist of interesting people who might help the track, and we give them a palette or a canvas to do their thing. We’re totally open, which is why when we reach out to them, they’re also open. Once they hear the music, they want to create their own thing over it. It’s fun because we get to create a wishlist, go through it, and contact people. It’s not a long list, honestly; it’s mostly through existing relationships. I mean, I don’t know Radiohead (laughs), so it seems like it would be difficult to reach Thom Yorke, which could be another amazing collaborative moment. We try to reach within our own network and connect with people who are interesting and talented.
HUNT: This project has been interesting and fulfilling, and the collaborative aspect of it is an extension of the way James and I work as well. At the same time, it’s also very focused on what it is and what we want it to be, and the process with James and me—the way we work—has been very resonant with everybody we have reached out to. Every vocalist who has contributed to the project has done so in such a smooth and inspiring way. It has been almost shocking how little challenge or back-and-forth there has been. It’s been such an interesting gift.
KUPPER: Do they come to the studio, or just send audio tracks or layers?
HUNT: FKA Twigs was the only person we got to spend a day with in the studio, which was a magical set of circumstances. For that track, James and I had a list of materials that we thought might be interesting for her to sing on, based on her previous work. When we got into the room and started playing these things, she was totally disinterested in every idea we had. But fortunately, because of the nature of how we work—how much capturing and accumulating sound and material process we have—I was able to just open a big folder of stuff and offer her more ideas to choose from. There was a very random part of one of the rough ideas that she liked, so we started expanding and chopping it up in the moment with her.
SHAFFER: Yeah, she was such a pro. Watching her process of creating this fresh track was really inspiring—she went in, laid down her background vocals, then her main vocal. Usually, people work on tracks for six weeks or more, but with her, it took six hours, and the song was done. It was incredible.
KUPPER: How do you think this album differs from the earlier ones? What do you think your take is on the evolution of it?
HUNT: It’s a similar level of openness in terms of experimentation for us in the process, but experimental in a different way. It’s not rigid, but a bit more structured. There is generally more percussion with drums and rhythm throughout, and the ideas are a little more succinct.
SHAFFER: It feels more structured, and yet it’s the same world that we created on the first album. But there’s an expansion and more focus on some of the details of that world.
KUPPER: James, you mentioned Thom Yorke. But Chris, who's a dream collaborator for you?
HUNT: Oh, man, I have him right here on this Zoom call. (laughs) I really don’t have a good answer for that. I feel like the dream collaborator is yet to come. We have to make the dream music for it to reveal who the dream collaborator is.
KUPPER: James, this project feels like such a deeply intellectual side to your sound and musical philosophy. What do you think fans of Korn might misunderstand about you through this music, and what do you hope to clarify about this side of your musical output compared to Korn?
SHAFFER: For me, it’s an extension to experiment deeper into what I love, which is designing sound. I can design sounds on Korn records, but they are more riff-based. This is another branch of what I love: ambient music, electronic music, while still having guitar-driven elements and some aggressive drums. It also goes back to when the band first started. When Korn first started, I always loved John Zorn records—this crazy noise stuff. And then, I heard a Mr. Bungle album and saw that Zorn was the producer. I did some research and found out he is a saxophone player, but also a producer with projects like Naked City and other interesting works. That opened the doors for me and kept me inspired to create things like this. It also challenges some of our fans to step into that world with me, whether they like it or not. I hope they find something interesting in it and understand that it is just another creative way for me to express myself, both through the instrument and music, and also contribute to the visuals, creating a new extension of who I am.
KUPPER: What are you both working on now, individually?
SHAFFER: We’re working on a third album, and we have a lot of materials I don't want to describe prematurely. It's exciting, and it feels like a new branch that's sprouting in this world that we've already created and that's taking root.
HUNT: The thing that's been so lucky about James and me is that we’ve been working basically anytime we see each other, for two or three days. It’s sort of a double-edged sword because we're constantly productive, but it also means there's a mountain of material. And what I love about the project is that it’s a work in progress in a deep way—we’re constantly evolving.
SHAFFER: I look at it as us being sonic explorers—we keep trying to find new caves and new landscapes to either create or explore and see where it takes us. There's just so much creative satisfaction in it. Especially when you discover something new, it's very satisfying to the creative soul. We have so much music; it's crazy. And it's all interesting. When Chris goes in to find the moments that have that magic inside of them, it's like stepping into a whole other world. We also like to go to a few different studios around LA because each one brings out a different texture and adds elements we weren’t expecting, whether it’s the mic positions on the drums, how I’m set up, the amp I’m using, or just the character of the room itself. We really get inspired by different spaces. The more we explore different rooms, the more we discover. We haven’t done anything outdoors yet, which would be really interesting to see what comes from that kind of improvisation in an open space. That’s definitely on our list.
HUNT: There are definitely some sounds on this record that stand out. Specifically, we used field recordings and found sounds. Chelsea Wolfe’s music partner, Ben Chisholm—who worked with her on her part of the track—actually contributed some of those recordings. I think they sounded like wind or something alongthose lines. It was really interesting material and caught us by surprise in the best way.
