Cello as metal: Raising the horns for Helen Money

Chicago cellist Alison Chesley's avant-garde creation, Helen Money, slips into eerie territory between chief influences on her 2009 album, In Tune. Its minimalist yet layered solo cello pieces include a cover of Minutemen's "Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing" and plenty of ventures into multi-tracked dissonance and distortion. At the same time, it never deprives the cello of its classical, full-bodied reputation. Though Chesley doesn't necessarily claim a lot of metal influences, she's found herself mixed up in that world, earning some metalhead listeners, plus opening gigs this earlier year for former Queens Of The Stone Age and Kyuss member Nick Oliveri. Before her show Friday at the Hideout, The A.V. Club took a spin around In Tune to dissect how metal bands might see a bit of themselves in Helen Money's entrancing, disciplined instrumentals.

Percussive stampedes

The album's first track, "MF," opens with a steady clicking that crescendos to battle the melody line, foreshadowing the burst of layers to come. Far less obvious than a rumbling kick-drum, its might is always lurking in this music, even during quieter moments.
Horns of solidarity: Amon Amarth's "Death In Fire." The opener on the Swedish death-metal band's 2003 Viking opus, Versus The World, might lack Money's subtly, but it only takes a few bars of drums to signal that the entire song is going to kick ass.

Menacing ambience

The first half of "Sagrada" sounds more like a field recording in a catacomb on a bad day than it does a cello. Dark as it is, it comes to complement the mournful melody that gradually overtakes the song, in a marriage of effects-pedal alchemy and elegant composition.
Horns of solidarity: Earth, a band Helen Money has opened for, also evolved from a pioneer of droning doom metal into a band that patiently sculpts its tunes and sonic textures evenly on all of 2008's The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull. On the warty end of black metal, there are more artists coming to embrace atmosphere, making songs like Leviathan's "Merging With Sword, Onto Them" both mysterious and unapologetically hideous.

Symphonic tendencies

Is it possible for a cellist to mimic the "gallop" style of metal rhythm guitar? The rough, muted attack makes sense on a guitar but might insult the cello's lavish tones. Money plays to the instrument's finer qualities while creating a menacing chug with a distorted, lower-end part on "In Tune."
Horns of solidarity: Cream's influence on heavy metal probably varies depending on whom you ask, but remember, bassist Jack Bruce originally trained to be a cellist. Cream's "Deserted Cities Of The Heart" proved that a little seasick, bowed drama could meld with elements of hard rock.

Grandeur

Helen Money doesn't need a laser show or Rick Wakeman holding court behind a bank of synthesizers to create something grandiose. Intentionally or not, "Too Heavy" moves with stately importance. Without overloading the senses, it demands that listeners conceive of something bigger and possibly more sinister than themselves.
Horns of solidarity: Tool's "The Patient" gradually swells with shadowy sonic theatrics (just like any song from 2001's Lateralus). First though, it snags the ear with the morose picking of Adam Jones' guitar, about as close to In Tune's bracing, room-sound production as Tool will ever come.