AVALON (Netherlands) www.avalonrocks.nl

IF ROCK HAS A NAME IT MUST BE AVALON

Welkom op de
Morgan La Fay / Masquerade
fan web-site!

Met dank aan Jack Pisters, Jax Kraal, Maarten Huiskamp, Eric Fox, Richard Muermans, Giovanni Pileri, Jan van Dinteren en Noud Smeets voor de medewerking, de informatie, de correctie's, een deel van het beeldmateriaal, en uiteraard voor de inspiratie.

Morgan La Fay -

MASQUERADE

Timeline

80's
Morgan La Fay founded.

80's
Repetition's, practice, write new (own) somgs.

1983
Morgan La Fay Line-up changed, Richard Muermans and Jack Pisters leave to join AVALON

1984
Noud Smeets joined LionsPride.

1985
Noud left LionsPride.

1985
MASQUERADE founded.

1989
Recording session's for 3 track demo "Behind The Mask.

support act for CRIMSON GLORY.

Richard Muermans left MASQUERADE,

almost a record deal.

End of MASQUERADE at that point of time

1991
Start "PROJECT MASQUERADE".

1991
Start record session for CD 9 tracks recorded 5 tracks mixed by Ron Lieberton

......

2009
Noud Smeets signed a deal with Italian Record-label Metal Heart Records.

2010
January/February 14 track CD Cybernetic Empire by MASQUERADE released.

2010
March/April Solo-EP CD by PROJECT MASQUERADE to be released at the Metal Heart Records label.

2011
October 6-track CD by Noud's PROJECT MASQUERADE "Nothing but everything will remain " released

December "Killer of life " track grom "Nothing but.. " released on the Sorrow Eternal The sampler Vol.1 by UK E-zine Sorrow Eternal

Somewhere in the 80's, Noud Smeets met Jack Pisters at a Judas Priest gig.
They found out they both played guitar and dicided to start a band with some guys from their school.
So Morgan La Fay was born.

Morgan Le Fay was founded by:
Jack Pisters - gitaar,
Noud smeets gitaar,
Luc Peters drums,
Jos Janssen bass and
Richard Muermans vocals.

After a lot of local-gigs, Richard Muermans and Jack Pisters left to join AVALON.
Morgan La Fay did (try to) continue with another leadsinger, Henry Fins from Horizon,
Jos Jansen was later replace by Ronald Klatt on bass, they recorded a 2-track demo in 1984.
tracks: Nighttime in the city + Inside-Outside
But this seemed to have no future.

Noud Smeets next got an invitation of the band

from Belgium, who just released an album entitled "Breaking Out" on the Mausoleum Records label. (Skull 8336)

He did tour and record with them for about one year, with an performance at the Shockwave Festival in the Limburghal in Genk., where an official video was recorded.

When Noud left Lionspride he was into theMALMSTEEN and TONY MACALPINE music style, and started a project in the same fashion.
This project with the name Masquerade having Jax Kraal (who had just left AVALON) on drums,
developed into a real band with Ronald Klatt on bass and Vince Wehren on vocals, along with Noud and Jack.
The band was recorded live by dutch Radio "ROZ" but the original-tapes were stolen from the broadcast van that same evening and -sadly-never returned.
(who-ever has a lead or information can contact the webmaster of this site or Noud Smeets via his website)
Vince left to concentrate on his own band and was replaced by Remco Naghtzaam.
With Remco, Masquerade played a lot of local gigs and supported bands like US Metal band HELSTAR.

Somewhere around 1989 Masquerade was planning on a demo at "Joe's Garage Studios".
First intended to be "just" an instrumental-demo-project they ended up recording a full demo
with Richard Muermans (who had just left AVALON) on vocals, who replaced Remco during the recording sessions.

Masquerade - Behind the Mask

Their demo, entitled "Behind The Mask", started selling pretty well, eventually supporting mighty CRIMSON GLORY
(!!!) on a few gigs, and being on the virge of an record deal with an quite popular French record-label.
Prerequisition of the French label was Richard Muermans would stay with the band.
Unfortunately forMasquerade Richard, however did not want to stay, the music was to much "metal" for his taste.
So Masquerade was forced to start auditions for another lead-singer.
None of the 30+ appliants in the next year was of equal quality to Richard.
So that was the end at that point of time for Masquerade.

Two years after, Noud Smeets and Ronald Klatt decided to start another band, and they named it PROJECT MASQUERADE.
Abourd there were one of Holland's best drummers Rob Snijders and 3 different lead-singer at the same time;
amongst them Gregoor vd Loo(Lemur Voice) and Hans Reindes (Speedica, Form) and Michel Zandbergen (Picture), three well known names in the dutch Metal-scene.
Unfortunately Richard could not be traced at that time.
All with the intention to record a CD.
The band had a long recording-session with 9 titles,
from which 5 had been mixed by Ron Lieberton (Zinatra) at the famous "BMI Johnny Hoes" studio.
Out of their recording one track did make it to an sampler-cd and one promo-cd.

Noud was also involved in New Breed but New Breed does not exist anymore since july 2005, after that the band was now known as "Me Monky",
Furthermore Noud is involved in the new band X-ist.
More recently Noud Smeets joined for some time the band

and the band

.

Currenlty, Noud is playing live with singer songwriter Grain and he has his own solo-project named again "PROJECT MASQUERADE".

The latest news is Noud has signed a deal with the Italian record label Metal Heart Records.
On this label in January / February 2010 the CD Cybernetic Empire by Masquerade is released.

The CD contains the 1st demo with following line up:
Noud Smeets - Guitar
Richard Muermans - Vocals
Jax Kraal - Drums
plus the remastered recordings of the 1994 promo cd with
Rob Snijders - Drums,
Gregoor vd loo (Lemur voice), Hans Reinders (Form) en Michel zandbergen (Picture) - Vocals
Noud Smeets - Guitar
The CD will also contain some studio-outtakes and 2 live tracks recorded in De Boerderij - Geleen with Jax Kraal on drums.

In October 2011 a CD si released with the titel "PROJECT MASQUERADE - Nothing but everything will remain " .
This ep is partly recorded in New York and in the Nederland
with o.a.drummer Dennis Leeflang (Bumblefoot, Lita ford, suncaged ea) Chandler Mogel (Outloud) op vocals, Barend Courbouis op basgitaar.

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