What's all this fuss about?

Latin lyrics in Heavy Metal music are a common phenomenon. The darker the music, the more evil the band wanna be. What's better than using an old, mysterious, hardly understandable, cryptic, medieval and therefore almost satanic language? Unfortunately bands seldom know how to use this language properly. So, instead of evoking the demons of the realm of evil, they just evoke a hop-frog. Clatu verata nicto! - The most of you know what happened after this wrongly spoken spell.

Normally, two questions are the result of the fact that you've just read a latin phrase:
- What does it mean? (almost everybody)
- Is it correct? (just a few latin aficionados)

This page doesn't want to make fun of mistakes in latin lyrics. I wanna answer the first question to everybody who is interested. The second question is just for myself or for the two or three weird guys out there or for bands which are thinking about using a latin phrase as well. You can contact me if you want.

Dienstag, 1. Juni 2010

Sabaton - Wehrmacht

Sabaton - Wehrmacht - The Coat of Arms (2010)

The Swedish are marching again... using German tanks and Latin words, at least in the song "Wehrmacht", where they sing:

ad victoriam!
ex machina
non sibi sed patriae

This mean

to victory!
out of the machine
not for self but for the fatherland

I found out in the internet that this latin phrase is engraved in the doors of the United States Naval Academy chapels. It's also the motto of USS Halyburton.

Good luck with conquering Europe in 2010. See you there!
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1 Kommentar:

-- hat gesagt…

Interesting translations, you could always take a look at Ofermod's "Rape the World", there is some latin in that song as well as other languages. It's supposed to be an Overflash cover but I'm not sure the original has lyrics in so many languages.

19. Juni 2010 um 20:02

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