These are Stephan's explanations about an album (the band has already made 15 song with 10 to select forthe new album) and a musical:

"First we wanted to do an album called "Monte Cristo" which should have been kind of a rock musical. But after a while we realized that it would be very hard to find a good solution regarding the songwriting. If the songs are too hard, no one in the theater-scene would listen to them. If they are too soft, our fans could be a bit irritated. At the end we felt limited in both ways. So we decided to make a regular Vanden Plas album (based on Monte Cristo) and a musical (called Monte Cristo). This way we are free to write some heavy stuff and in the same way we are free to write theater-like songs which aren´t heavy at all. That´s the best solution for us, and hopefully nobody will be disappointed!

The musical will star different singers. Hopefully it will be played at a theater someday, but right now I don't even know if it will ever be recorded because that would be a big challenge. We just started the songwriting of
the musical, and if you think about what is neccessary to create a musical, you can imagine that it will take a longer time to realize that.
Anyway, for the moment our regular CD is the most important thing, we have to finish that first."

On the other hand Andy Kuntz's solo album "Abydos" that has been released on 30/08/2004 has entered in the last german Rock Hard Magazine Top ten.
To check sound samples of this album go here:
http://www.insideout.de/indexx.php?arg=AQcSBEtBQUyPAQ

Band profile:

Vanden Plas