adg211288 For her tenth album and major label debut Game On! (2017) Chinese cellist Tina Guo has put together a collection of renditions of video game music, mostly in the form of medleys. Games featured here include old school favourites such as Super Mario Bros. and Tetris as well as modern classics like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Being a multi-genre artist who has done everything from new age to thrash metal, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to find that Tina Guo isn't limiting herself to classical music on Game On!, though that is the main genre of this album. Quite often the songs on the album get flavoured with a symphonic rock arrangement or even feature full blown metal sections, something that is very prominent in tracks such as Final Fantasy VII, Super Mario Bros. and Halo. However there are actually guitars and bass in almost all of these arrangements, used in varying amounts. The only one that doesn't is Journey.

I've often thought that videos games had some great scores in them and there is a nice selection of tracks on offer here. I think with an album like this is the main appeal is going to be towards the music from games each listener has actually played and for me that's The Legend of Zelda, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Skyrim and last but not least the most nostalgia inducing of them all, Pokémon, which I also happen to think its one of the best medley arrangements on the album. Very epic stuff that makes me want to rewind the years and be making that agonising choice that every Red and Blue owner faced in the nineties: Bulbasaur, Charmander or Squirtle. I digress – music! The Super Mario Bros. medley is another highlight from Nintendo games. Not a series that I personally was ever really into but the metalhead in me appreciates the epic metal section in the middle of the track. Tina does a similar thing during the Final Fantasy VII medley.

The most different track on the album is The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as the game's music is styled quite differently to the usual score arrangements, and is the most vocal piece on the album as well. There's no metal in this one but there's still a connection to the metal world as the lead vocals are done by Einar Selvik who has had stints in bands such as Gorgoroth, Sahg and Jotunspor as well as folk band Wardruna and the collaboration Skuggsjá with Enslaved's Ivar Bjørnson. Rather than seem out of place the track offers up a nice little (it's quite short) deviation from the norm and it's nice to see this modern masterpiece included on the album.

There's actually a surprising amount of metal across the album for something that on the surface looks billed as a pure classical work from Tina Guo. The appeal of course is more limited for metalheads compared to her earlier fully metal album Cello Metal (2015), but if you're a fan of the video games included here it's well worth a listen. The metal parts are, if anything, a bonus.

adg211288 Chinese cellist Tina Guo has had, so far, quite the genre spanning career. While much of her work falls within the classical music spectrum as you'd expect with a solo cellist, she's also played a range of other genres and covered songs from a wide range of sources. On her seventh album, Cello Metal (2015), Tina has produced her first metal album. It's not her first foray into the genre as both the earlier albums The Journey (2011) and Eternity (2013) both featured influences from metal, but this is her first (and so far only) fully-fledged metal release. Within it's forty-five minute duration she performs a mix of original material and covers from a selection of classic metal bands: Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Pantera and Slayer.

With the name Cello Metal adorning the album it would be easy to liken what Tina Guo is doing here to the work of Apocalyptica but that would be an incorrect assumption. This isn't cello's amped up to imitate guitars, but a traditional metal setup of guitars, bass and drums but with lead cello, often replacing the role of the vocal melodies in the cover songs. What few vocals can be heard here are basically for sound effects – this is best considered to be an instrumental album.

As for the actual genre of the album, it's a mix of mostly heavy metal and thrash metal based riffs with one notable diversion into groove metal when Tina covers Pantera's Cowboys From Hell. Her cello sometimes makes things symphonic but classing this album in that niche wouldn't be accurate. Thanks in no small part to her two original songs The God Particle and Eternal Night as well as covers of Slayer's Raining Blood and Metallica's Welcome Home (Sanitarium), here just called Sanitarium, I can't help but consider Cello Metal to be primarily a thrash metal album. Tina's use of the Chinese Erhu in a track like her original piece Forbidden City also adds a touch of oriental folk to the album.

The clash of intense metal and cello is something that works really well for Tina Guo. She's a seriously talented cellist even without the metal behind her, as her work on other releases shows, but put that together with the metal and she seems to go on a whole other level. The final track, Queen Bee, which I believe is considered her signature piece, is absolutely insane. She really hammers that cello at a speed that makes it sound as if she's playing a thrash/speed metal riff and it even sounds as if the guitars in that song are having a hard time keeping up with her. Overall she's made a pretty unique sounding metal album where her own material is excellent and she makes the covers her own. Her take on Metallica's Sanitarium in particular is stunning. You'd think that the song always used a cello due to how smooth it sounds in the calmer sections.

Tina Guo's other work isn't much like this one (but still very nice stuff), though a few of her own tracks here were actually on prior releases as well. While I'd really like to hear her release another album in this style (no matter if it contains original material or covers of classics or both), she's certainly made a special album in Cello Metal. I haven't heard any metal band come out with something that sounds quite like this (though I haven't actually heard a whole Apocalyptica album to be fair, but the songs I have heard were much more symphonic than this album). Highly recommended stuff.