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.

Samstag, 27. Juli 2013

Fleshgod Apocalypse - Agony


 Fleshgod Apocalypse - Agony (2011)

Fleshgod’s music isn’t metal for the masses. Their mix of classic orchestration and insane and complex death metal is quite demanding. So are their lyrics, the English as well as the Latin ones. They don’t content themselves with screaming words like “sathanas”. They dig deaper into ancient books. Some of the phrases are very well-known, some I didn’t found in classical textes, so I guess that they wrote it by themselves. Hats off!

~ The Imposition ~

Semper avarus eget et hostis humani generis est
He who is always greedy lives in want and is an enemy of the human race

Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat
Impunity always invites to greater crimes.

Parcere subiectis (et) debellare superbos
To spare the subdued and war down the proud 
This is a quote of Vergil’s Aeneis, Book 6, Verse 853, where (in the underworld) the dead Anchises reveals the future and destiny of Rome to his son Aeneas.


Ab uno disce omnis
From one, learn all/ the whole 
Again a quote of the Aeneis, Book 2, Verge 65. Here, the whole phrase talks about the Trojan Horse.

Fiat iustitia et mundus pereat
Let there be justice, though the world perish 
This was the motto of Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor of 1558.

~ The Deceit ~

Discete aut disce quam ubi non accusator, ibi non judex
Learn (plural) or learn (singular) that there is no jugde where is no accuser. 
(Although discite would be the correct imperative plural)

Si vis pacem para bellum, cur qui tetigerit picem inquinabitur ab ea
If you want peace, prepare for war, because he who touched pitch, will be besmeared by it

Impares nascimur, pares morimur, ergo iustitiam quaerimus, rem omni auro cariorem cur pulvis sumus et in pulverem reverterimus
Unequal we are born, equal we die, so we seek justice, which is more valuable than gold, because we are dust and to dust we turn

~ The Egoism ~

Si vitam inspicias hominum, si denique mores, cum culpant alios: quia nemo sine crimine vivit
If you look at the men’s lives, or at least at his manners, (see, that) everyone has a skeleton in the closet, although he blames the others
This is a poem from the Distichs of Cato (the Elder, 234 -149 BC). In fact, the collection of Roman proverbial wisdom is older and not originally written by Cato. Fleshgod filled in the word quia – because. This doesn’t make any sense, because it turns the only main clause into a subordinate clause and it destroys the hexameter. But I don’t want to blame the others!

~ The Oppression ~

Quis habet fortius certamen quam qui nititur vincere se ipsum?

Who is forced to struggle more than he who tries to master himself?
Thomas à Kempis - The Imitation of Christ, Book I,3

Keep on rockin’, FG and see you in the “Labyrinth”.

1 Kommentar:

Logicked hat gesagt…

Great post, thanks!
For a second, I thought I knew why they added the "quia", but after listening to that part again, I realized that they could have made it work just as well without it. Oh well!