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, 2. Januar 2010

Anaal Nathrakh - So Be It

Anaal Nathrakh - So Be It - In the Constellation of the Black Widow (2009)

Today I had a annoying trip over snowy highways, but... therefore a lot of time to listen carefully to the Anaal Nathrakh album, trying to understand some lyrics. Quite hard because of V.I.T.R.I.O.L's guttural art. Fortunately, I found some lines at http://metal-archives.com/ , because the band doesn't publish their lyrics.
I was very happy to find some lines and to see that my thoughts weren't wrong: I've got a notion that he sings latin in one song. They are from the bible, Isaiah24. Here we go:

Ecce Dominus dissipabit terram:
Et nudabit eam, et affliget faciem ejus,
Et disperget habitatores ejus.

Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty,
and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down,
and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.

[…]

Dissipatione dissipabitur terra, et direptione prædabitur;
Dominus enim locutus est verbum hoc.

The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled:
for the LORD hath spoken this word.

[…]

Propter hoc maledictio vorabit terram,
Et peccabunt habitatores ejus;
Ideoque insanient cultores ejus,
Et relinquentur homines pauci.

Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth,
and they that dwell therein are desolate:
therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,
and few men left.

By the way: Some weeks ago I've already explained the meaning of "V.I.T.R.I.O.L", the name of Anaal Nathrakh's singer. But the guitarist also has a interesting latin name: Irrumator.

The ending -tor always refers to a man doing/ using something. The "gladiator" uses a sword (gladius), the "imperator" rules (imperare - to rule). The "irrumator" does "irrumare". This latin verb is a very strong obscene word, used by the famous poet Catullus in his 10th poem. "irrumare" means "to punish someone by forcing him giving a blowjob".

Abusing a man by oral or anal sexual acts was a hard way to punish adulterers.

2 Kommentare:

Anonym hat gesagt…

hey great site :-)
I was wondering if you could tell me how one would say "Demon Chronicles" in Latin, because technically, it's in the genitive case because it means "chronicles of demons" -- would it be something like "Annalis Demonica" or "Annalis Daemon" or something?
Thanks!

markheim hat gesagt…

Hi darkeva,

you are almost right: For "chronicle" I would use the plural form "annales", which are books full of things that happened each year (annus - year).
Then you can use the genitiv object "annales daemonum" or the adjective "annales daemoni".
Best regards!