Biography

Will Schut (Boxtel, The Netherlands, July 9th 1969) got excited about rock music somewhere in the seventies, after hearing the band Kiss for the first time. When a few years later he heard Van Halen's debut-album he knew for sure, he wanted to play the electric guitar!

When the eighties hit, Will was forming his first bands, Villain, a band that tried to mix metal and funk and later on Talion, a more melodic metal endeavour. In 1988 Will recorded his first solo songs, which were heavily influenced by the likes of Malmsteen, Gilbert and MacAlpine. Together with the drummer who played on his solo recordings, Will formed Argent Manes about one year later. This band became notorious for their gung ho live performances and their raw, yet deceivingly complex song structures. Besides their own material the band covered songs by Ozzy Osbourne, Guns 'N Roses, Van Halen and Focus.

When the band split up, somewhere in the early nineties, for the first and so far only time in his career, Will joined an already existing band, Southern Circus. This was a band with a more symphonic approach to rock music, not unlike for instance Dream Theater. After two years Will left this band to do another solo project, this time with a vocalist. These recordings captured the attention of many talented musicians, three of them actually talked Will into forming a band, so Flesh And Blood was born.

After two months the band recorded two songs and entered Veronica's Rockbattle, a contest with about 600 bands participating. The band made it to the last fifteen and then, out of the blue, de organisers of the contest decided to cancel the competition for reasons still not quite known. Later that year, 1995 that is, they replaced their drummer and changed the name of the band, although Will wanted to name the band Almost Human (after a song title by Kiss) it was democratically decided to name the band Lafordova, after an infamous Russian prison.

This line-up gigged and recorded without interruption throughout 1996 to 1998, opening shows for Vanden Plas and Hammerfall and headlining some smaller festivals. In 1999 the band got a worldwide record deal with Power Records International and released their debut-album 'Circus of the Damned'. This album was very well received by critics and public alike, selling many copies from Europe to America to Japan.

One year later the band went on a nationwide tour with two bands they had befriended, Mac 11 and Frusthatred, called the Power Metal Pack Tour. When that tour came to an end they did a tour opening up for King's X, after that they opened up for Paul Di'Anno's Battlezone.

In 2001 the band recorded a second album, but then their record company went bankrupt. The band negotiated with different international record companies, but was unable to sign a deal on their terms. A little frustrated, the band went sabbatical somewhere in 2002, also because they had worked their asses of for the last seven years and they needed a break, not from each other, just from the rat race we call the music business. The band never split up and the four members are still very close friends!

Blood proved thicker than water, in 2002, after popping up as master of ceremony and jury member in Aardschok's Metal Bash Competition, Will started to record again, this time applying himself to what?s known today as 'shred guitar music', combining killer riffs with a keen sense of melody and a monster technique to back it all up. Again he asked a couple of singers for the vocal parts, which resulted in participations of the vocalists of Silent Edge, Dimension 7, Astrosoniq, Chirra Niva and off course Lafordova. The reactions so far have been more then positive, there seems to be a global interest for his latest demos.