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.

Donnerstag, 7. Juli 2011

Inpestae - Cold and Dead

Inpestae - Cold and Dead (Psykothic Violence) (2008)

Just a short comment: A guy sent me the link to this EP of the French raw black metal band Inpestae. The name sounds latin and eventually refers to the noun "pestis - pestilence".
But "pestae" isn't a correct form of this word. The prefix "in-" is normally used for negations.

There is the adjective "infestus" which means dangerous, ready to attack, but I don't think that the band meant this word, especially because the ending "-ae" indicates feminine plural.

On the quoted EP there is one track which has the latin title usque ad sanguinem incitati. I don't know if the lyrics are in latin, too - I couldn't understand what he's singing.
The plural form incitati means provoked. In latin, you normally used this word with a direct object: to provoke somebody/ something. The term usque ad sanguinem - up to the blood doesn't make sense at all. If you translate this phrase literally into German, you get the correct phrase gereizt bis aufs Blut, which means extremely provoked. Maybe, this phrase exists in French as well, I don't know. So, let me know!

Dissection - Reinkaos

Dissection - Reinkaos (2006)

I was asked to check the lyrics of the latest Dissection record. I found
a lot of strange words which are definitely not latin but another
language I don't want to go into that right now, simply because I've
no clue about it. Some words look a little bit like latin but they aren't
and a few ... yes, you guess right... so:

* Starless Aeon *

Dies Irae Dies Illa Solvet Cosmos In Favilla
Vocamus Te Aeshma-Diva

Here, Dissection used the famous Dies Irae-theme but exchanged the
latin word "saeculum - century" for the greek one "cosmos/kosmos -
cosmos, order". So, "kosmos" is the opposite of "chaos", another
word of great importance to this record:
Days of wrath, that day will dissolve the order in ashes.
(By the way, you need the accusative: whom does that day dissolve?,
so the correct greek form would be "kosmon")
We call you, Aeshma-Diva (a deamon of Wrath)

* Chaosophia *

Lucifer Illuminatio Mea!
The song title means The love for Chaos. The rest is quite simple, even
to those who don't understand latin: Lucifer, my illumination!