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.

Freitag, 25. April 2008

Marduk - Imago mortis

Marduk - Imago Mortis - Rome 5:12 (2007)

The title of the song means "the picture of death". The song contains two lines in latin:

Lux rigor mortis - light, the rigidity of death
cinis ater et ossa - black ash and bones

1 Kommentar:

Die hat gesagt…

Hallo! just wanted to add two phrases to your blog, if you permit it to me:

Ars Moriendi: the art of dying
Pompa Funebris: funeral pomp

Both, from Marduk's "La Grande Danse Macabre" [2001] Blooddawn Productions.

Thanks for your attention.

Diego Zambrano Rodríguez