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, 23. August 2014

Opeth - Pale Communion

Opeth - Pale Communion (2014)

I have to confess, I was not the first. For I was on holiday the last days, I couldn't buy the new Opeth record yet and therefore it was wikipedia who told me that there are three latin sayings in the triptych you can see on the cover. Where are my sackcloth and the ashes?

  • On the left: An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur? - Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?
    The Swedish statesman Axel Gustavsson Oxenstierna wrote this sentence to his son in 1648, because he wanted to encourage him for the forthcoming negociations which leaded to the Peace of Westphalia - the end of the Thirty Year's War.
  • In the middle: Hoc tempore obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit. - In these days friends are won through flattery, the truth gives birth to hate.
    This sencence appears in the comedy "Andria", written by the Roman author Terence in 166 BC.
  • On the right: Ille dolet vere qui sine teste dolet. - He grieves truly who grieves without a witness.
    You can find this phrase in Epigramma I,33 by Martialis. In this little poem he blames a girl because she just weeps over her dead father when witnesses are around.

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