Two years after the release of In Exile, Noblesse Oblige release their 3rd album Malady, an occult concept album that cites the visual mysticism of Kenneth Anger, Aleister Crowley’s storytelling, and the morbid melancholy of Christina Rossetti’s poetry.

The album’s title, inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Tropical Malady, a modern day ghost story set in the jungle of , symbolises the mental afflictions and dark temptations of the heart expressed in the album’s eerie tales of voodoo gods, soul electrification, and tropical fevers.

Further inspiration was the Voodoo literature by Haitian writer Rene Depestre and readings of field research work by anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard and his studies of witchcraft and magic among African tribes.