I wasn't too hot on the band's name when I first saw it - sounded kinda generic to me - but that was before I understood that a "chord" is exactly what these guys are creating with their music. Formed by one of the guys from Pelican and some Chicago-based buddies, Chord have been floating around for a little while, playing a couple of shows and releasing a series of ringtones a few months ago that were sourced from their material for this album, and now their debut album is finally out via Neurot. The whole idea behind the band is pretty heady; like their name suggests, Chord create huge walls of sound based on a single guitar chord, the album featuring four chords, Am7, Gmaj(flat 13), E9, and Am, and each member plays a seperate note of the chord given to them in order to create the whole. It sounds simple, but the band tweaks the notes, bending and shaping them and thus forming a massive, layered cloud of distorted metallic drone. It's an impressive sound, and it makes sense that the band cites composers like Glenn Branca and Tony COnrad as being influential on their rumbling dronescapes. The sound on Flora is constantly shifting and evolving, as the chords undergo changes in attack and tone and density, sometimes transforming into a soft minimal field of hum, or exploding into monumental walls of crushing caustic roar. Their are brutal raga-like waves of Skullflower style skree, and droning, repetitious mono-chord riffs clanging over clouds of buzz and whir, and at their most gentle, Chord are capable of dispersing into delicate mists of sound. It's all quite meditative and lushly layered, but the album reaches a peak of heaviness on the fourth and final track where they take on the A minor chord, turning it into a mighty towering slab of chugging, corrosive ultra-distorted drone, super heavy and caustic, ensconced within thick layers of chaotic buzz and crackling, scorched feedback, a massive doomic march into oblivion. This turned out to be a killer album that is surprisingly closer in philosophy to the guitar-army compositions of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca than I had expected. Recommended!