Vodun: Possession

Weird and wonderful Afro-psyche madness.

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Do Me Bad Things were the Next Big Thing for a brief moment back in the mid-noughties. Ten years on, vocalist Chantal Brown is back with something altogether more terrifying.

Now going by the name Oya and accompanied by fellow practitioners Ogoun (drums) and Marassa (guitar), she fronts a devilishly heavy Afro-psyche trio on a mission to celebrate West African voodoo and its worldwide spread.

Topics covered include the Franco-Dahomean Wars (Mino’s Army), the desire for supreme transcendence (Loa’s Kingdom) and the Catholic Church’s campaigns against superstition in Haiti (Kanpay Rejeté).

If that all sounds a bit impenetrable, fear not, for Possession is filled with the kind of thumping riffs that don’t require an academic background to appreciate. It’s wrapped up with spoken-word interludes, rattling tribal percussion and monstrous levels of all-round freakery, as Oya’s Motown wail soars above the madness. Gloriously weird.

Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.