Dial is a new group made up of former Pain of Salvationer Kristoffer Gildenlow, the stunningly gorgeous Liselotte Hegt and Rommert van der Meer. This curious mix of Swedes and Dutch got together back in 2003 cos they wanted, no, needed to make some music.

And bloody good music they have made too.

Ok then, track by track:

The opening track Beautiful is a powerful and atmospheric start to the album. It kicks the album off in an atmospheric Viennaish way, before crashing in around your ears. It has Lilo singing, in a hauntingly breathless fashion that verges into DFFGPM (Dutch Female Fronted Goth Prog Metal) but pulls it's neck away from the block just in the nick of time, before it gets swamped in cliche. The lyrics "Mirror mirror on the wall" must be this years "thing" as this is the second album to feature it, after Blind Ego's excellent Mirror.

This is followed by Sadness which totally lives up to its name, very melancholic, with Kristoffer singing. This could almost be a Blackfield song, in it's own unrequited love kind of way. And I can think of no higher praise than that, currently.

Jewel comes next, a beautiful track, maybe my favourite song on the album, with Lilo singing, gently at the start, over a simple piano line. Very Kate Bush, though maybe later on when she was on crack and with an effects pedal too!

Just when you think you have the measure of what Dial is all about, along comes a track like Candyland - it's a Showgirl/musical tune, think Christina Aguilera dumped into Cabaret, with a big helping of the Dresden Dolls or a touch of Sophe Lux perhaps. Plenty of melodrama, big drums, choirs and stuff.

The slow Gildenlow sung Green Knees comes next, which could be a tale of an old man looking back on his life, possibly on Death Row, or maybe just in Croydon, back to when he was a kid and you all know what that was like, green knees indeed!

Hello, says Hello next, with its unusual duet between Kristoffer and Liselotte. A sort of a Don't Give Up for 2007 with Pete and Kate replaced by Lilo and Kris.

It's strange. This is a totally mellow album yet has enough Pain of Salvation touches to be totally recognisable. Points of View is a good example of this. The song floats by for nearly 3 minutes them bursts into restrained thrashery before going all Haysi Fantayzee in the middle, when the three members trade vocal lines but that's not a bad thing, it's well big leggy!

Wish It Away is another slow track, sung by Kris initially over a piano backing which gets heavier as the track progresses, while the following Wounded is another weird sounding song, sung by Lilo, sounding like a heavy Kate Bush, and I don't mean like Dawn French in a leotard. Though that would be good...

Nature's Cruelty reminds me of something that I've not been able to put my finger on for ages. How cruel is that? Childhood Dreams closes off the album, and this does remind me of The Edge Of The World, the closing track on Pendragon's last album Believe, with it's reflective lyrics, though these tread the path of the nursery rhyme, like some nightmarish Shrek vision.

I do love this album, and I do love it when an album creeps un all unexpected on you like this one did, amongst all the Blackfields, Marillions and Porcupine Trees, this one escaped unheralded like a fart in a lift, but one that smells of roses. Like two of the other three.

Dial are playing at the iO Pages festival at the de Boerderij in Zoetermeer in the Netherlands on May 26th, along with Neal Morse and Mangrove. Neal's old muckers Spock's Beard are playing there on the Friday with our old pal Steve Thorne!