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.

Mittwoch, 29. Dezember 2010

Deathspell Omega - Si monumentum requires, circumspice

Deathspell Omega - Si monumentum requires, circumspice (2004)

Little more work to do. I don't know why I didn't write about the older DSO album before - it's full of latin phrases. So here we go:

The album's title means: If you are looking for a/the monument, look around you. I think it would have been better to use "requiris" instead of "requires". While "requiris" is present tense, "requires" is future tense and in a conditional sentence ("if...") there is no need for a future form.
So, the correct translation is: If you gonna need a/the monument, look around you.

~ First Prayer ~
Omnis humana cogitatio in fundamentis putrefactionis conditur, quam ecclesia Domini nostri ei praeposuit. - Every human consideration/ thought/ plan is based upon the fundaments of putrefaction, which the church of our Lord gave him. - Well written, without any mistake.

~ Sola fide II ~
In this song, he sings the phrase Sola Fide. Sola Deo Infernali Gloria several times. It means: Just in faith. Just (in) the glory for the infernal God. While the form "fide" is just ablative case, a case used to answer the questions when?, how?, because of what?, where? by what?, the form "sola gloria" can be nominative (who?) as well as ablative case.

~ Second prayer ~
Ita est putrefactio Dei similes, sive materialis substantia spiritus Domini in orbe terrarum. - This is how the putrefaction of God is [similar], or the material substance of the Lord's holy ghost on earth.
I'm wondering at the form "similes", which is nominative/accusative plural masculine. There is no other word in this phrase to which "similes" can correspond. Maybe the band wanted to say: Ita est putrefactio Dei similis, ... which means This is how the similiar putrefaction of God is, ... or This is how the putrefaction of the similar God is, ...

~ Hétoimasia ~
This ancient greek word ("preparation") refers to the empty throne of Christ which is prepared for his second coming. The wiki-article obout hetoimasia tells you more about this symbol.

~ Odium nostrum ~
This album title is plurivalent. "odium" means "hatred". "Nostrum" can be an adjective refering to "odium", so the correct translation is our hatred. It can also be a genitive plural form, and if so, the genitive refers to the one who feels the hatred ("our hatred" again) as well as to the one who is hated ("the hate against us").

Every latin student hates this phenomenon... Or does every phenomenon hate latin students? I'm not sure, but I think I know quite well whom the mysterious guys from DSO hate.

Annotation: The album's title might be inspired by the inscription of Christopher Wren, who was the architect of St' Pauls Cathedral in London. He was buried there as well and the latin inscpription (link to a picture which I found in Dave Etzold's blog) says: Underneath lies buried the architect of this church and this city, Christopher Wren, who lived almost 90 years, not for himself, but for public wellfare. Reader, if you search a/his monument, look around.