Cassette Collection Part 1.
I’m not really one hundred percent sure why I like collecting tapes. It’s not my main method of purchasing music. The amount of vinyl I have far outweighs my tape collection, both in terms of quantity of pieces as well as breadth of genre.
However, every now and then I’ll see an old album has been re-released on tape or a big band has decided to do their new album that way as they look to cash in on as many formats as possible and I’ll decide to grab one. For the most part though, the majority of the tapes I have, which isn’t many, are releases from smaller, underground bands.
I like buying tapes from underground bands for a number of reasons. Obviously the main reason is to support what you love and buy physical and tape offers a way to do that which is cheaper for me as the fan (damn shipping for vinyl got really expensive) as well as cheaper for bands to produce.
I also like to buy tapes from death metal bands which doesn’t tend to suffer from the lower quality audio that you tend to get from cassettes.
So with that being said, I thought I’d do a little series of posts sharing some of the tapes I do have in my small collection. I’ll try mix the styles through each post.
The first tape I’ve randomly pulled out is a modern death metal classic and that is ‘Hidden History of the Human Race’ by Blood Incantation. Great album, great band. Not sure how the mega proggy follow up would fare on tape however this one sounds good to me!
Second we have a modern thrash album by Chicago band Misfire. They were the first band I ever interviewed when this self released album got picked up by a label and re-released. I’m not a massive fan of modern thrash, I think it can be a real struggle to find good stuff but I really dig what these guys do.
Third and finally for this post is ‘Realms of Exquisite Morbidity’ by Texas death metal Malignant Altar. This is the only full length album they released before splitting up in 2022 but this is well worth checking out for all death metal fans.
What do you think? Do you buy tapes and if so what are the jewels in your collection?
Hails!