Dial Zero is a Danish grunge band that, most famously, recorded two songs for LEGO’s BIONICLE theme: the popular “Hero” and the slightly-less-popular “Caught in a Dream” (the sessions were recorded under an alternate name, “All Insane Kids”). They are known for codifying the alt-metal, grungy sound with bassy male vocals that the theme’s commercials would be known for – they set the stage for “Move Along” by the All-American Rejects and “Crashed” by Daughtry to appear in toy commercials and fan music videos for years to come, as well as partially inspiring LEGO’s in-house BIONICLE band, Cryoshell.

The band’s style, influenced heavily by Nirvana, is exemplified in their nontraditional song structures (for example, “I Wanna Go All the Way to Have Some Fun” has two choruses and no verses) and their idiosyncratic lyrics, which feature repeated phrases with slight alterations between verses and lines. This can be seen all over their album and even the two songs they recorded with LEGO.

They recorded a single self-titled album, released in 2005, and said later that year on their website that they had written new music that was “F*****g tits”. They recorded songs for another album in 2007 but the album appears to have never surfaced, and their website went offline sometime in 2008. Morten and Casper would form a hard rock band called “Kings on Parole” in 2015, releasing a four-song demo on SoundCloud. They played a few shows in 2015 before going dark until 2019, when they posted a Kickstarter to Facebook for a Dial Zero film. It failed to reach its funding goal. The description for the Kickstarter describes DZ beginning their first American tour when the “lead guitarist” (it’s unclear who this is – it’s unlikely lead vocalist Christian Bastian would have left, but guitarist Casper Lerkilde also likely didn’t ditch the group, given he rejoined drummer Morten Krog Helgesen in 2015) left the band, rendering the group an acoustic trio that called off the tour.

On January 12th, 2022, Dial Zero was uploaded to streaming services, as well as two singles – “Puke” and “Mt. Everest” – and one EP, “Together we’ll never make it home”, which seem to have been culled from the unreleased second album and were previously unknown. “Together we’ll never make it home” specifically seems to be a collection of songs performed on the aforementioned acoustic tour, itself featuring wholly acoustic instrumentation (aside from the final track).