Classical cellist Tina Guo’s debut full-length metal album, Cello Metal, pre-release is available/ pre-order now.  After a listen to the advance copy, this is a powerful “crossover” album that rocks up there with Apocalyptica, Heavy Mellow and all the other good current “genre-bending” bands out there doing virtuoso classically-based metal.

The list of guest guitarists for the metal covers on this album include John 5 and Al Di Meola.

The five originals include the incredible “Queen Bee” –Winner of Best Short Film/Music Video at the Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival and a song that will surely get people to take notice of her extreme talent.

The other originals include some all out thrash metal“Eternal Night” — a standout track on the album.  “Child Of Genesis” and “The God Particle” are intense, heavy tunes that takes some interesting twists and turns with a little bit of power metal thrown in for good measure.   “Forbidden City” pushes the limits of metal given the fact the cello is actually capable of things in a metal context that even a guitar cannot achieve:

Hearing Al Di Meola performing a Metallica song (“Sanitarium”) is worth the price of album alone.  That was completely unexpected.  “Iron Man” with John 5 and the cello really deepen the sound and give new life to one of the greatest riffs of all time.

 As one might expect, Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper/The Iron Maidens) rocks on “The Trooper.” and the cello adds an even eerier dimension to Slayer’s “Reigning Blood” and goes places a cello probably hasn’t been before.

Each of the five ‘metal classic’ covers on Cello Metal feature a special guest guitar player:

“Iron Man” (Black Sabbath) featuring John 5
“Sanitarium” (Metallica) featuring Al Di Meola
“The Trooper” (Iron Maiden) featuring Nita Strauss
“Raining Blood” (Slayer) featuring Wes Borland
“Cowboys From Hell” (Pantera) featuring John Huldt

These are songs like you’ve never heard them before and this album is highly recommended.

 Tina Guo is a composer, soloist and recording artist and has appeared on movie, television, video game scores and has been a featured soloist in Cirque Du Soleil’s Michael Jackson “The Immortal” World Tour.  She has performed on the American Country Music Awards with Carrie Underwood, on Dancing with the Stars with Carlos Santana, Jimmy Kimmel Live with Ellie Goulding, and at the GRAMMY Awards with the Foo Fighters, among many other growing accomplishments in her career.  www.tinaguo.com

Pre-orders are available as of today (July 7th) on iTunes and will include an early download of “Iron Man”.

The physical and digital release date for Cello Metal will be August 4th.

On August 8th, Bar Sinister in Los Angeles will host an album release party with a live performance of songs from the album.