WELSH star of the West End Steve Balsamo is back with a new band and lead role in Eric Woolfson's POE - More Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Steve Balsamo is known to many as Jesus Christ Superstar and the quilted vocalist behind hits such as Sugar for the Soul.

Last year he pulled on some tights to star as the horror writer, Edgar Allan Poe, in a lavish new musical.

It's been written by Eric Woolfson who, in the 70s rock group The Allan Parsons' Project, recorded an album along the same lines.

The new musical tells Poe's life story and includes dramatisations of some of his tales including Pit and the Pendulum and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

The latter was the first detective novel and its sleuth, C Auguste Dupin was Sir Author Conan Doyle's main inspiration for Sherlock Homes 60 years later.

Pit and the Pendulum and others such as The Masque of the Red Death are considered some of the earliest and best supernatural stories. When Balsamo came to play the American author he was already a big horror fan.

"I love the films of Dario Argento, the master of Italian horror," he told Mono. "I used to drive my mum mad, staying up late to watch the horror double bills - Lon Chaney, and then Vincent Price in The Fall of the House of Usher.

"I remember in Porthcawl there was a waxworks museum at the time and once I peered through the window and saw The Pit and the Pendulum." POE is not a horror project but it does have some atmospheric lighting and the music is similarly blessed.

So far it has only been performed three times in Abby Road's studio one which Balsamo describes as church-like.

"It's an incredibly beautiful place," he says. "In the stage show, by the end I am singing with a live raven sitting on my arm!

"During the performance I recalled the line in The Walrus, 'Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe,' and for the first time I could really see where John Lennon was coming from."

Balsamo says that the record company is currently in talks with Woolfson to take the show on the road in one of three different ways.

"It could either be a rock concert, something halfway from a rock concert and a stage play set in strange buildings, or the full blown musical." An album of the stage play was released this week under the same name.

Later this year Balsamo is also likely to appear fronting his own, as yet unnamed, rock band, playing live dates, with an album in the shops. He's based in London but is working in South Wales with a band of Welsh musicians.

The band are Dave Smith (guitar, signed to Sony as a solo artist)), Rob Thompson (guitar), Andy Collins (bass), Brian Thomas (drums), and Slack (drums).

They've let the project go where it wants to go, says Balsamo. "It's kind of like the Eagles and a bit Crosby Stills and Nash," he explains. "My heart is more in rock music. I love the genre and there's a big resurgence at the moment which is great.

"The guys I'm working with I've known for years - we're getting back to where we began."

They are rehearsing now ready to take it on the road. Once the album has been recorded then they will go shopping for a record deal rather than the other way around.

"The other way around being when you sign to a record company who keep you hanging around for three years while they decide what direction they want you to go in," says Balsamo.

His first album did not sell as well as had been expected, not least by Balsamo, but as he adds, "the music industry is in a funny old state at the moment".

Since that disappointment, however, he has been releasing music through other stars including Meatloaf whose latest album has his song Because Of You.

For more info surf to www.stevebalsamo.com