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.

Sonntag, 8. August 2010

Estatic Fear - A Sombre Dance

Estatic Fear - A Sombre Dance (1999)

From Argentina, I got a reference to an Austrian Symphonic Doom Black Metal called "Estatic Fear". They released two albums in the 1990ies. They are not only interesting regarding their music (listen to Estatic Fear), but also regarding their lyrics which contain english, german and latin words.

In general, I have to say that I sometimes had to guess what the lines mean. The grammar contains some mistakes and even words which look like latin but which aren't.

Chapter II:
Sengi amoris - ??? of the love
In pacis quentis - In ??? of the peace (maybe they meant quies - quietness)
Tvemor inogeng - tremor = tremble; inogeng = ??? (non-existent)
Osculum pudens - a decent kiss

Chapter IV:
Numquam submergiove aut diffugo
Ira inflammata mea vita ad salutem nominarit
et solitudo meum robur

This part doesn't make sense, so I'll translate every single part, using the correct spelling:
numquam - never
submergo - I sink
-ve - and
aut - or
diffugio - I disperse
ira inflammata - inflamed anger (nominative)
mea vita - my life (nominative)
ad salutem - for the health
nominarit - he/she/it entitled
et - and
solitudo - loneliness (nominative)
meum robur - my strength (nominative/accusative)

Chapter IX:
Cura a die renovato cedit
Dolor et laetitia coniungtus est

Again with some errors, but in general easy to understand:

The cure gives way to the renewed day,
Pain and joy are united.
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