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.
Ihsahn - Das Seelenbrechen
Welcome, trick Nr.5! Quite dark and obscure, more a network of mere impressions. Ihsahn used some German words and some Latin ones as well - so here we go:
- Hiber - the noun hiems means winter, and the adjective hibernus wintry.
- Tacit - he/she/it remains silent
- Sub Ater - sub means under/ underneath and ater means dark, black. The term sub ater isn't grammatically correct: under the black would be sub atrum/ sub atra, and underneath the black sub atro/ atris.
- Sum quad eris - (what the choir sings in "Regen") This is a spelling mistake, it must be sum quod eris - I am what you'll be. This was a often used writing on tombstones: fui quod es, sum quod eris - I was, what you are (now), I am what you will be.
Or, in latin metres: Siste viator iter, per me tu gnothi seauton, Nam quod es hoc fueram, quod sum nunc et eris - Hold on, traveller, with my help you know yourself, because what you are, was I and what I am now, you'll be.
1 Kommentar:
Great Article! I really like it. And - by the way - great name for your blog. Latin crowds are the best! :) Up the irons!
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