Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | Heavy metal artists regularly borrow mythological or historical themes from the Antiquity. The use of the Latin language itself appears as another striking feature of the metal universe. It shows with the many bands which have chosen a Latin surname and/or use this language for album and song titles, but also within song lyrics or associated iconography. While confirming the various reasons for this seemingly unexpected success, this paper explores a few examples, among which Powerwolf, in order to demonstrate that the use of Latin is charged with meaning and lies at the very heart of the proposal of bands active chiefly in more recent subgenres, such as power, symphonic or medieval metal: this new lingua franca contributes to give weight to the themes, concepts and image that they develop and, through the feeling of unity and universality that it conveys, brings together a community of fans and artists, builds a bond between them, and can even seal the pact of regular collaborations between musicians. |
