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It’s been said by many before me, but we really do live in one of the easiest times to produce and release your own music. While there have been bands making quick demos with crummy production values for as long as you could reasonably record music in a garage somewhere, the accessibility of self-publishing sites like Bandcamp have made it so that pretty much anyone can just pick up an instrument, record some tracks, and release your work to the world. The downside to this is that you often get amateur musicians that are maybe a little ahead of themselves and release music before they’re properly ready to do so, and unfortunately, I’d say that’s the case with Wolven Daughter.

No Grace But Through Torment is a raw, simplistic slice of Black Metal that proves the style is easy to learn, but difficult to master. The music is almost exclusively mid-paced, with riffs that trudge at a death march and drums that plod along behind it while some fairly nasty yells struggle to be heard above it all. Despite how basic they are, the riffs themselves aren’t bad, often sporting a nice atonality and wanting to do more than the standard tremolo picking, and they help to give this an atmosphere that borders on tribal and arcane.

Unfortunately, there’s no real shape to the songwriting, as it mostly kind of stands in place with a few ideas before suddenly stopping, so it all starts to drag despite none of the songs are even three minutes in length. That said, there is a charm to how unassuming it is, and it definitely shows a grasp of the fundamentals of the genre better than some far more professional bands I’ve come across. Amateurish and clumsy, but not without potential.