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, 27. April 2011

Anaal Nathrakh - Volenti non fit iniuria

Anaal Nathrakh - Passion (2011)

The opening track of A.N. record to come has the title Volenti non fit iniuria. This is a common law doctine which means: To a willing person, no injury is done. First, I read Violenti... which would have been: To a violent person... and I thought, great latin title, typically Anaal Nathrakh, but here the wish was father of the thought.

Sonntag, 24. April 2011

Arkan - Deus Vult

Arkan - Salam (2011)

"Salam" is Arkan's second record; based in Paris, they play melodic death metal mixed with oriental influences, a bit like Orphaned Land (by the way: OL singer Kobi Farhi does the guest vocals on the track "Deus Vult".) If you are open minded, check the song! Great stuff, I think.

Deus vult means God wants it. So it's the latin translation of the arabic insha'allah. This word again turned into the spanish/ portuguese word ojalá/oxalá - "hopefully".

Freitag, 22. April 2011

Portrait - Crimen Laesae Maiestatis Divinae

Portrait - Crimen Laesae Maiestatis Divinae

In May 2011, the Swedish Heavy Metal band Portrait gonna release their second album which has a latin album title, as you've already read above. They bring us fine old-school heavy metal in the tradition of Mercyful Fate and others...

I'm also proud that I can add not just another black metal band - which isn't a critique. But it's nice to see that there aren't just evil black and white guys running through foggy forests out there which use latin chants for singing about Satan and darkness... well, ehm, Portrait sings about Occultism as well. Maybe they are a black metal band, but they don't know it yet. We'll see.

By the way, the album's title means The crime of having offended/ injured the divine majesty or, in other words: blasphemy.
"Crimen Laesae Maiestatis" is the medieval term for having committed a crime by acting against the majesty or insulting him by words.

Donnerstag, 21. April 2011

Baptism - Et vidimus gloriam eius

Baptism - Morbid Wings of Sathanas (2005)

In 2005, the finnish black metal Band Baptism released their second full lenght record called "Morbid Wings of Sathanas". The first song on this record contains the following latin lines:

Song title: Et Vidimus Gloriam Eius - And we have seen his glory

Peccare et mentiri contra dominum et aversi sumus
To sin and to lie against the lord and we are against (it/him)

Spoliavit me gloria mea et abstulit coronam de capite meo
My glory spoiled me and took the crown from my head

Hosanna in profundis
Hosanna in the depths

Erat lux vera
It was the true light