The return of...cassettes?!

Sometimes it seems like many parts of our culture come back such as fashion, musical styles, films and lots of other aspects. In some ways that can be a good thing and in others it just seems like some clueless person let their love of nostalgia get the best of them and they tried to bring back something that probably should have been left in the past. Remember cassettes? Yes, you have to be of a certain age to and I fall in that category. Unfortunately I bought far too many releases on this fragile, poor sound quality type of format. I have heard and seen too many of these plastic monstrosities being twisted, mangled and eaten by merciless stereos and boom boxes. Then I was left with bent or ripped black tape in my hands as I stared at the now gutted cassette. So when these went away it was a good thing. Okay, CDs can get scratched, but they are a better format because they are far more sturdy and digital is even better in many ways. Wait, cassettes are coming back. No, don't bother going to your calender to see if it is April 1st. It's not and this is no joke although I do think it is a fad. Some bands are releasing their new albums on cassette. The first I saw this was from some thrash band's Myspace page and they were selling their own demo on cassette only. Wow so not only do some of these band's want to look and sound like it's 1986, but they also want the sound quality to sound it came from then with all that pleasant hissing and the potential for the music to be devoured by your likely old cassette player. Most of the bands I have seen doing this are smaller bands and mostly it's self produced efforts done in limited quantities. However Enforcer's Diamonds was released by Heavy Artillery on a limited number of cassettes and they are a fairly known old school style metal band at least well known on the metal underground.

So what do you think? Will cassettes come back in style or will this trend be done and gone a year from now?