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, 17. Juli 2015

Powerwolf - Lupus Dei

Powerwolf - Lupus Dei (2007)

Powerwolf arose out of the void and ascended the top of the cross within just a few years. Their last record reached the top of the German charts, their newest one - released today - may repeat the success. We'll see. At the moment, I lack the whole lyrics of their new record, therefore I enter the past and gonna talk about their 2007-release "Lupus Dei".

The first song (The Wolf of the Demon) and the last one (The Wolf of God) on this record contain latin phrases:

 ~ Lupus Daemonis ~ 

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
Amen. 

This is the Hail Mary:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; 
blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. 
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, 
now and at the hour of death. Amen.

~ Lupus Dei ~

Cantus lupus
Satura luna
Corpus nudus domina


Agnus totus
Animus mortus
Ave deus sinistra


Cultus lupus
Opus damnatus
Metus mortis nocturna


Terra sanguis
Padre occultus
Sanctus pupus anima

These words are grammatically c..., a few latin words just strung together without considering grammar rules, declination or conjugation. I translate them litterally, so everybody can interpret them by himself. 
Totally wrong is the line corpus nudus domina for example. The word "corpus" is neutral case, the word "domina" feminine case. If "nudus" should refer to "corpus", the correct ending would be "nudum", if if should refer to "domina", the correct ending would be "nuda", or better, in genitive case (= of the nude lady) "dominae nudae".

song wolf
sated moon
body nude lady

lamb whole
Spirit dead
Ave god evil

cult wolf
work damned
fear of the dead nocturnal

land blood
by the father occult 
holy little boy soul 

But there are more important things like case endings, if you reach the top of the charts, I guess.... Look forward new record. To see you. !

1 Kommentar:

Maya St. Clair hat gesagt…

I'm a Latin student and I love this blog. It's so charming! So many Latin laughs (corpus nudus domina is too good) and lots of new music to check out! Multus amor de Chicago.