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Saturday in the Desert: Natas, Delmar (1996)

Thought we’d do something a little different to close out this week. For my money, NatasDelmar is probably the best album Man’s Ruin Records ever put out, and not to take away from what Kyuss accomplished — you could easily argue records like this wouldn’t exist without them and I don’t think you’d be wrong — but there have been many times where it’s one or the other and I wind up pulling Natas off the shelf instead. A full 16 years after its release, it remains gorgeous and has lost none of its potency.

The Patient Mrs. and I are in Boston for the weekend, which seems even farther away from the desert as I look out the hotel window and see it’s snowing, but I brought Delmar along for the ride and so it’s on my mind. No big change there, since it’s on the shortlist of my favorite albums ever, but with a couple listens through yesterday in the car, I figured another wouldn’t hurt. Still burns me that I haven’t been able to get ahold of the last Los Natas full-length, Rutation, that they released last year. With the band broken up though, what seems like distro only in their native Argentina and guitarist/vocalist Sergio Chotsourian moved on to the heavier but continually righteous Ararat — their second album, II (review here), has endured as one of this year’s finest — it doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon. Hopefully I’ll bump into it somewhere along the way.

A bit about being in Boston: I’m moving here. Well, not here exactly, but about 45 minutes south to or near a town called Bridgewater. My brilliant wife — whose smokin’ hotness is matched only by her devastating intellectual prowess — got a professor’s gig at a college down that way that starts next fall, and as this weekend was likely to be my last opportunity to see the place before the holidays hit and the usual chaos erupted, here we are. We’ll drive down there in a bit and the basic idea is to check out the scene ahead of making the move sometime next summer, though apparently there’s a house on the market with an outdoor bar, which is about as close as I’ve ever heard to paradise.

That’s the reason for the delay on the review of the High on Fire/Goatwhore/Primate/Lo-Pan show, which otherwise would’ve gone up yesterday. I also saw Six Organs of Admittance last night up here, figuring they rule and if I’m gonna be here I’d better start getting out to stuff. Both of those reviews will go up early next week, and as I’ve lagged on album writeups lately, I might see if I can do two one day or something like that. I also still need to get that Bell Witch interview up, which I said I’d do this week and then never did. A bit of upheaval over here, and more time than I thought got taken up by adding to The Obelisk Radio. If you click that link and notice albums haven’t been added for two days, it’s only because — whoops — I filled the hard drive. My intent is to pick up a couple terabytes this weekend and get back to it as this week starts up, Monday or Tuesday.

Speaking of Monday, it’s December now, which means time to start the readers poll to find out everyone’s picks for the best albums of the year. Last year’s poll was good times and I’ve been looking forward to seeing what records stood out to everybody. My own list I’ll probably put up somewhere in the middle of the month — just when everyone’s really sick to death of self-important critics’ top 10s and 20s — and I know there are some tough choices in terms of deciding what’s to be included and in what order. It’s been a pretty wild year.

And as it starts to wind down, I hope as always that you enjoy what I’m doing with this site, that you dig the Natas, that you check in on the forum, take a listen to the Obelisk Radio stream and check back here for that High on Fire review, readers poll launch and much more. The one thing that never seems to be lacking is adventure. I’ll take that.

Have a great weekend.

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2 Responses to “Saturday in the Desert: Natas, Delmar (1996)”

  1. RalphSnart says:

    I only have “Corsario” and “Ciudad”. Kind of forgot about Natas. But they are the Kyuss of South America, and they should not be forgotten.

  2. “probably the best album Man’s Ruin Records ever put out” That’s rough! I beg to differ, but for me its probably Goatsnake I… and I come from South America… Cheers!

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