Elfrida Onuora Makes a Grand Return with “Thunderings” Album

By Esomnofu Emmanuel

Elfrida Onuora

The Nigerian music industry remains a great contributor to the economy of Nigeria. Daily, people listen to music. In a religious country like ours, the yearn for gospel music remains endless.

In each decade, different artiste come through with their style of worship, style of performing and recording their music. In recent times, there have been artiste who have been bringing a lot of fresh air into the music industry.

Elfrida Onuora, the Nigeria born singer, performer, record maker and iconic songwriter seems to have carved a niche for herself with the skillful and out of the box style of performance.

Her new project titled “Thunderings,” is a clean, cool and exciting approach to gospel music. The album which was released on February 18, 2023 with a running time of one hour , forty five minutes finds the music minister collaborating with arrays of stars.

Elfrida Onuora is a soulful singer. She exercises all these on this album. In the opening track titled “Ogogoro,” she likened worshipping God to dry gin. It is a metaphor yet the whole essence of this song can’t be ignored. She slowly starts, building up with input from the back up singer. This skillful style continues on the guitar and drum based “We Are The Name,” she alludes to the name of Christ.

Most of the song on this album starts with chants, in this way, the singer puts the listeners on a wave, she prepares them for what is coming, when she kept repeating the word, river on “Out of My Belly,” she already prepared the listeners, one minute into the song. Like expected, the guitar and piano work dominated the production.

FavourChrist and Elfrida Onuora combine to birth a formidable force on “Revelation,” while she solely showered praise to God on “Banner of Love,” with aid from skittering drums. Songs like “God in the flesh,” and the title track celebrates the beauty of God, the awesomeness of his doing and more. On the title track, the thundering drum makes her singing beautiful and marvelous, too.

The second and first half of the album had the exact number of features, four apiece, the song titles are shorter, this time around. Songs like “Open Book,” “Exalted,” “Holy,” “Fire in My Heart,” “I am the Light,” and the last track “Timeless,” are song that is enshrine in soulful tune with the artiste leaning towards praising God, invoking the spiritual while calling upon other listeners to join her.

Elfrida Onuora has just opened a new vista to her craft as a singer and more importantly as a revered performer in the music industry. With the combination of perseverance, hardwork and creativity, she seems to be on a new and uplifting journey on this album. It is a long album with pockets of goodies for the listeners. Perhaps, it is safe to say, the only way from here is up.