Despite having been around since 1996, Mirkvid has kept a remarkably low profile, placing them firmly within the black metal underground. The last new material that the band produced, the album Unser Reich, dates from 2004, and nearly all evidence of its existence has already vanished from the Internet. This past year, though, RuneFire Records rereleased the group's second-to-last album, The Burning Night, aiming to get more exposure for the band.

The group classifies themselves black metal on their Myspace page, but I'm not really sure how accurate that label is. The guitars are fairly distorted and there are some symphonic elements from the keyboards, but the fast-moving drum-beats and the riffs resemble rock more than anything else. The song structure falls into this category as well, employing a standard verse-chorus pattern. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though; when it works, it can be quite catchy. Granted, catchiness is often the kiss of death for metal purists, but in this case, it generally manages to avoid cheesiness and works pretty well. The vocals break away from the conventionality present in the music and sound most like an enraged hiss, an effect which seldom pops up in any music, anywhere.

The album opens very strongly with "Outland/Hymn Drei". The song epitomizes everything that can go right with the group's style: the riffs are aggressive, energetic, and memorable and the song is catchy to the point of addictiveness. Unfortunately, the other songs, while pretty good, don't really deviate much from the template set by the opener and monotony starts to set in. A later song, "Die Erlkonig", breaks the formula a little by reducing the guitars' role and emphasizing the keyboards, but this isn't really enough.

Ultimately, The Burning Night is an album to be listened to in small doses, perhaps mixed in with a playlist on shuffle, rather than straight through. The overall sound is quite enjoyable, but there's not really enough variety on the album. After a while, it all starts to blur together, with the exception of the great opener and a few random sections from some of the other songs. That said, the band definitely has promise, and I'll be interested to see what they release in the future.