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.

Mittwoch, 18. Juni 2008

Marduk - Accuser/ Opposer

Marduk - Accuser/ Opposer - Rome 5:12 (2007)

At the beginning of this song a man croaks some latin words. Here we have a perfect example of the use of latin language I mentioned in the blog's summary. These lines are part of the catholic exorcism ritual:

Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio: in nomine Domini nostri eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei.
Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis coelorum in inferiora terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestatibus imperavit.

I exorzise you, you filthiest spirit, you topmost run of the enemy, you total ghost, all legion:
in the name of our Lord, to eradicate and to get away from this representation of God.
He himself reigns you who commands you to vanish from the highs of heaven into the depths of the earth. He himself reigns you who reigned over the sea, the winds and the storms.

2 Kommentare:

Unknown hat gesagt…

I wouldn't think that a band like Marduk would not know what text are they putting into their song, e. g. take an exorcist rite for some satanic chanting. It's the listener that might wish to think a bit why has this been put in here. Or might not, of course.

Anaximandro Steel hat gesagt…

Interesting proposals and compilations of examples. Although I agree with the comment posted that we are confident that, for example, Marduk is not an improviser, it may be that some inexperienced, serious and knowledgeable band may err in introducing Latin lyrics. I'm telling you that I came to your blog because of a comment regarding the topic
Accuser / Opposer, if the introduction belonged to a movie or as it was recorded and of course, it remains pending what refers to the Gregorian chant of the end that, unlike the intro, not even appears in the book of the cd.