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关注虾米：La damnation de Faust, Op. 24: Part IV Scene 19: Pandemonium: Irimiru Karabrao! (Chorus of the Damned and the Demons) - Slovak Philharmonic Choir - 单曲 - 网易云音乐
La damnation de Faust, Op. 24: Part IV Scene 19: Pandemonium: Irimiru Karabrao! (Chorus of the Damned and the Demons)
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Ominous Latin Chanting
O Fortuna! Velut Luna! Statu variabilis...
Somewhere over the past few centuries, . Maybe it's the fact that it's the language of
that collapsed from over a thousand years ago. Maybe it's because it's also the traditional language of , and thus associated with divine power, spirituality, mystery, death, and . And from there it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to the idea of . And then there's the music with which Latin is often associated — for example, the unique sounds of the Gregorian chant — which can sound decidedly sombre, even spooky to a modern ear. Latin choirs also have those distinctive "ooh", "aah", "ooo" and "-us" sounds, ascending theatrically and descending dramatically.
So whenever you hear a choir singing powerfully in Latin, especially with , it means that this is epic . This trope is extremely common in movie trailers and the climax of devas Hollywood will tell you that nothing can dictate "watch this movie" or "Grand Finale and the End of the World" more than potent choir chants in a language most viewers don't know, and that this is the way to give a scene that extra bit of ominous importance.
The actual meaning of the words is unimportant. They could be singing Latin nursery rhymes or reading from a Roman phone book for all we know, or even
o it's the sound that matters, but there are bonus points if the chanting is reminiscent of, or outright stolen from Carl Orff's ,
. Another famous one is Dies Irae,
are genuinely . (If for any reason, such as parodying the trope,
has an mp3 download link for O Fortuna.)
If the creators are particularly clever, the chanting will include a .
Latin is probably the most familiar dead language due to its being the ancestor of modern Romance languages (even though English is a Germanic language, it still has a major proportion of Latin influence, primarily through French and science), and its prominence and impact on modern culture make it easy to fact-check. Nevertheless, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew and others are sometimes used to similar effect. If a work is set in Russia or the Soviet Union, expect Ominous Slavic Chanting. Eastern-style chanting is also having a surge in popularity, possibly due to the increase in stories featuring conflicts between Eastern and Western worlds. Creators that went to the trouble of
for a work will likely find a way to feature it in this manner too. There's also a chance that the music only reminds one of ominous Latin chanting, opting to use "ooh", "aah", "ooo", and the like. Indeed, the lyrics don't n for the majority of the audience,
works just as well.
and the . Often a part of
and . May involve . See also
for the ear shattering version. See also , where creepy songs and nursery rhymes are played in the background to add tension and fear to a scene. Often lends itself quite well to . Contrast , which has the opposite effect of this trope.
Plenty of the examples that follow have earned places on the
page in case you feel like listening to them.
&&&&open/close all folders&
&&&&Advertising&
The overuse of "O Fortuna" — particularly for huge, sprawling period epic war footage — was splendidly mocked in this
for the Australian beer Carlton Draught.
In Britain, "O Fortuna" was used for an advert for Old Spice aftershave... and a parody of that advert many years later for Carling Black Label lager...
"O Fortuna" is also used by Dominoes for a commercial in which they ditch the "Pizza" part of their former name.
It also appears in a commercial for Rickard's Red beer, albeit with English lyrics praising the beer. Nevertheless, it's sung by an ominous red-robed choir that appears
whenever someone orders the brand. A similar Rickard's commercial uses the above-mentioned "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana.
National Guard ad starts off with Ominous Latin Chanting, but then switches to Ominous English Chanting. Let's just say that it doesn't have quite the same effect as Ominous Latin Chanting.
Used a lot in trailers. There are companies whose main occupation is to supply trailer music for certain previews.
are particularly guilty of this trope. The more epic chorus and chanting, the better.
A disappeared channel in Latin America, Locomotion (the local precursor of ), used to feature epic commercials for its series, animation for grownups. An example was the one made for Evangelion.
In 1997, a TV spot for Internet Explorer 4.0 used "Confutatis" from 's Requiem as background music. The ad, which featured Microsoft's slogan, "Where do you want to go today?", was quickly pulled as word quickly spread of the lyrics' meaning: "When the damned are cast away and consigned to the searing flames."
&&&&Anime & Manga&
movie had the world rebuilt to Latin choral music ostensibly sung by the three Norns.
Golden Age Films have
as well as
and there is also
The song Lacrimosa by Kalafina in
has a point where it quotes directly from 's Lacrimosa.
uses it when the Fifth Espada, Nnoitra, releases his zanpakutou. He yells his , the , and the
choir goes nuts. The song is called "
Episode 226 ended with "Stand Up Be Strong (Part 1)," which features Ominous English Chanting, during Ichigo's second fight with Ulquiorra. There's also
which plays when Mayuri releases his bankai against Szayelaporro.
"Treachery" and "Invasion" also appeared during the final battle of , while "Stand Up Be Strong" comes from .
Meanwhile, the fourth movie, , is full of remixes of instrumental tracks that appeared earlier in the series, now complete with full orchestras and Ominous English Chanting, backing images of hell, angels, demons, and torment. These tracks began to appear in the anime episodes at the very end of the Aizen battle.
Another example of Badass Latin Chanting is
which likes to mix chanting and techno music when a serio quite suitably as the series is about a cold war between science and magic/religion but damn if it's not . Case in point:
first played when Touma faces off with and beats the crap out of Biaggio who's a bishop. Quite an ironic choice of music...
This kind of music accompanies any scene involving Britannian royalty in . The lyrics are English rather than Latin, but given
in this series, .
simply loves this trope, frequently employing it to make the act of writing a name in a notebook and eating potato chips . Whoever's name is written in the notebook will die 40 seconds later, so it is kind of an ominous moment when Light puts a name down. In fact, many of the epic Latin pieces in
have the lyrics of a Latin requiem mass. The song that plays during
the four-and-a-half-year timeskip montage, for instance, is a Dies Irae, which is about Judgement Day, fitting how
imposes Judgement on criminals and the rotten (though somehow, it doesn't include the "liber scriptus" verse). Even in the more calm moments you have the Kyrie Eleison chant, which may as well be the anime's theme.
The 9th episode (third part of the "King of Swords" arc) of the
animated series features an elegiac choir or male and female voices singing in Italian.
The opening theme for ,
is Latin with Greek touches, done in a Gregorian chant style. It sets the tone for the anime, which is similarly bleak, sombre, and spooky. The theme is a , but the song also appears in other scenes, such as next episode previews, sung by a male voice choir that sounds more Gregorian. There is a
in the form of a music box, giving it yet another different sound.
soundtrack also has many tracks with latin chanting like
or . It has even been used for the revised version of
also known to many as Saber's .
The first episode of : Brotherhood starts up the chanting when Frost Alchemist Isaac MacDougal figures out that Ed and Al attempted human transmutation and ends soon after the F&hrer . Specifically,
There's also Latin singing in
but it's more nostalgic than ominous.
Lots of Kenji Kawai soundtracks feature Ominous Japanese Chanting, most notably in his soundtracks for
and GITS: Innocence. And also
not only features Dies Irae as background music for
of the 's secret weapon, but it also has Ominous Opera Singing: the leitmotif for the various
flashbacks to the "Tragedy of Bashtalle" is an arrangement of "Una Furtiva Lagrima" from the opera L'elisir d'amore.
uses it to great effect in episode 6 when Gai
a deorbited
Several dramatic instances in
were punctuated by Ominous Italian(?) Chanting, such as Henrietta's
in the first episode. Also,
depicting Elsa committing murder-suicide strikes a bonus for having some
at the start of the piece.
Not even a (mostly) humorous series like this one is immune, as a choral score accompanied the climactic "final" episode. For a , it's an ode to the creator of the universe.
Also, the episode where Koizumi shows the Celestial to Kyon is accompanied with a gregorian chant where the lyrics contain mostly the phrase "Kyrie eleison" ("Lord, have mercy" in Greek). Quite fitting.
of the fourth novel, Disappearance, turns this on soon after a minute or two of
(the conflict itself seemed over anyway), when
Listen to "Rikishi no Tenkan Ten" .
"Jigoku Rock" (from the
sequences) from the
OST mixes this with... well... rock music...
has the utterly terrifying Gradus Vita.
performing a mock Latin-like chant to summon the , to London.
The anime of 's "Battle Tendency" has the track "", the
of Nazi officer Rudolph von Stroheim during his tenure as a . It consists of Ominous Chanting in the finest tradition of this trope even if it's in German and not Latin. For bonus points
and talks about the nature of the .
The anime adaptation of
has , which pulls out the chorus about a minute in.
What little we saw of the Negi vs. Chao Lingshen battle in the Mahou Sensei Negima ~Ala Alba~ OAD was accompanied with this.
Negima nearly all the spells are activated by an incantation in either Latin or Ancient Greek. Supplementary materials usually give the translations of these incantations, and they actually manage to retain some ominousness even in English/Japanese.
Half of the
soundtrack consists of Latin-sounding
chanting (by an all-female choir), mostly during tense, dramatic moments — and the
. This also shows up in Mai-HiME, particularly in Mezame and its various rearrangements/remixes.
The PS2/PC game for Mai-HiME has one track ("Fortuna" by Yousei Teikoku) that comes surprisingly close to averting this, though — its lyrics are mainly a smattering of quotes from classical Latin writers, particularly Virgil and Seneca, with classical rather than ecclesiastical pronunciation to boot. Taken as a whole it still doesn't make a lot of sense, but each individual line is perfectly legitimate Latin.
Shinn Asuka's personal battle theme in , "Dark Energy", before fans knew the real name, they
"the Evil Monk Chorus Song". Contrast with Kira Yamato's theme, which uses the .
Akatsuki has a
that carries the effect nicely.
And now we have the unearthly track , the only possible theme for Akatsuki's leader, the godlike Painnote&. Yet another example of
Also Orochimaru's theme/the epic fight music, although the chanting aspect is hard to hear or doesn't kick in until well after the fight and/or plot point is over (the 2 and a half to 3 minute mark).
Whenever Hidan's fear level goes up some sort of ominous chanting starts (with screams of pain in the background). When aided by Hidan's shrieking it gives goosebumps.
OVA, an ominous choir can be heard as Itachi starts
the instructions to make and egg.
When the Church Choir in
starts up, rest assured that many, many people are going to die. (Specifically, the songs "Salva Nos" and "Canta Per Me". The later is Ominous Italian Chanting. Les Soldats, played at the start of every episode to accompany one of the female characters , is also particularly ominous, considering it's the
in episode 24, even though the lyrics themselves ("Ode to Joy") are anything but ominous in German.
The music of
sounds like this at first, but then we realize it's Ominous English Chanting done in a way that it sounds like Ominous Latin. It goes even further, with both a
of "Angel Attack" and
played during the attack on Ramiel containing epic amounts of , with some of it being
for Western audiences too.
Rebuild 2.0 goes absolutely crazy with this, having no fewer than seven songs played during Angel attacks with Ominous English Chanting.
Followed by 3.0 having as many as twelve songs with Ominous English Chanting. As well as, calling back to the 24th episode of the show, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". At this rate, the final movie will probably have chanting for every single piece of music in the movie...
"The war to end all wars is here... the air is filled with heavy fear... huma suffering as millions see slaughter... this is the final showdown. There will be no tomorrow."
"" from The End of Evangelion. It only plays during the beginning of the end of the world! The English lyrics are quite appropriate as well.
Far in the distance / is cast a shadow,
symbol of our freedom, / will bring us salvation.
On the horizon, / hope for tomorrow,
sweeping across the land /
Look to the heavens / with tears of triumph
to cherish a new life / and suffer not again.
Then there's the
movie, in which the threat is Ominous German Chanting via Clone Beethoven's .
has a , "", that is Ominous German Chanting plus some menacing electric guitars.
in the second season gets the equally bombastic "", again ominous German with a bit of English.
The intro to the
anime is rife with ominous Italian chanting. While likely unintentional, the song's name, "One-Winged Bird", immediately bring to mind a
famous Latin-chanting theme of ominousness. From the visual novel, one of the game's soundtracks, , does have ominous Latin chanting. The phrase is "Dominus mā in dictorē astent in dictorum" (my God stands against the speaker in declaration). There is actually a few latin words interjected in the italian chanson.
The intros to
feature ominous backwards Japanese chanting.
has a few tracks that involve ominous chanting for fight scenes, specifically against the , although it's tough to tell what language is being chanted. "" sounds like it may be Spanish rather than Latin, but either way it has a rather depressing, haunting feel to it (which fits well with the character it's often played for).
features ominous German chanting "T&ten Sie sie!" ("kill them") whenever the main character activates his Lantern.
"Grain," the opening theme of .
A staple of the
soundtrack, particularly when Shadow Angels are involved.
Throughout the
soundtrack for Dragon Ball Z's original dub, there are various gregorian-like synthesized chanting sounds. They appear quite frequently, and helped give the show's first two seasons a very sinister, almost otherworldly feel. An example of this type of music would be the
that plays at the height of Goku and Vegeta's beam struggle.
Starting with
all of Frieza's
have this, as befitting of an epic cosmic emperor. There is his Kai' , his
theme song in Super'', and his .
In , Beerus' more frightening moments are accompanied by a track called "Beerus Madness", which contains a low chanting.
has , the theme of Soldat J, which plays during several of his [CMoAs], including his introduction and .
Happens on , sung by a choir of children during the
introductory : "Fiat Lux!" "Dixitque Deus!". Coincidentally, a different "Fiat Lux" is used in the
OVA. Given what is happening while she sings, and knowing the context behind both the song and her ability to perform it, crosses over into
territory.
, while being a manga series still fits the trope, as the Den's attack on the Scrapyard in the end of the original series is set to the lyrics of "O Fortuna".
the theme song of the the ominously named , fitting since the car is not only the fastest on Tokyo's , but also one of the dealiest to it's drivers (all previous owners had died in crashes, yet the car survives and continues to run). Later on, the song gets used for every major high powered car in the series.
makes heavy use of Ominous Latin Chanting, mostly in the bombastic themes relating to the hellish dimension .
has some Ominous Latin Chanting, to make sure the titles are also in Latin, with a mix of Italian and Japanese, all collectively referred to as "Kajiuran" after the score's composer, . One is Mami's , Sayaka's and the
Well the title says all.
: . "DIES IRAE, DIES ILLA, SOLVET SAECLUM IN FAVILLA!"
features quite a bit of strange, baroque music, but saves its Latin chanting for when the villain of the Black Rose Saga is .
There is some on the
OVA soundtrack mixing up the Sanctus and some other .
ominous Latin chanting comes up whenever Angol Moa uses her Armageddon Attack (even at one one-trillionth power).
The "one-trillionth power" at least, is justified, as Moa's
is . So at one-trillionth power, it "only" creates a crater the size of a house, instead of, say, cracking the entire planet Earth open like an egg.
occasionally uses a music cue that resembles it.
has the unusual variation of Badass Latin Chanting. Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann's theme music is a
version of Libera Me mixed with the
rap song that was earlier used as Kamina's theme in the
and they together are called Libera Me From Hell.
has not quite so Ominous chanting during the Christmas episode where
Kish finally realizes that Ichigo will never be by his side.
Many themes from , although the chanting isn't actually in Latin. The language is Kajiurago ().
The primary battle theme from
is the imposing, "O Fortuna"-inspired "Dance of Curse". At around the halfway mark, "Dance of the Curse" finds itself supplanted by the even more ominous and imposing "" as the primary battle theme. The fact that this is around the point where
is probably not coincidence.
also features some chanting on its soundtrack. The chanting on "SOLOMON" is hard to decipher, and could just be nonsense words, but they do have a Kyrie (technically, ominous Greek chanting) that sounds absolutely amazing.
has this as background music whenever a fight or something juicy is going on.
The summoning of the Egyptian God card "Winged Dragon of Ra" required Ominous Egyptian Chanting to do properly. The Dub replaced this with Ominous... English Rhyme?
does have Ominous Egyptian Chanting for anything involing .
Also, the music that accompanied the summoning of God Cards (and other particularly important scenes) in the
was replaced with this kind of chanting.
The chanting in "XL-TT", "'' 's go-to 'oh god we're screwed now' track, may not be in Latin, but it's certainly ominous.
The eighth episode of
launches into a remix of the Weather Trio's theme when Archie awakens Kyogre, with the chanting kicking in when it finishes breaking out of its stone shell. Considering , it is entirely appropriate.
has "", a techno metal piece played as the shie witch Dorothy saves Maria from being burned by the church. It somewhat clashes with the orchestal tone the rest of the the soundtrack uses, but it only .
features this in "". Appropriately enough, this is basically the theme for Samekh, the giant King Cybody which upon being freed from Zero Time will absorb all Libido on planet Earth and thus kill every living being. There is also "", reserved for intense fight scenes.
&&&&Comic Books&
has a chorus of Incan women chanting in Quechuan as Tintin, Calculus and Haddock are about to be burned at the stake as .
&&&&Fan Works&
played this trope for laughs when the sinister
made his appearance to thwart our heroes, accompanied by an orchestra and choir that had appeared from nowhere and a helicopter airdropping Nobuo Uematsu to direct them both in a parody of "One-Winged Angel".
"O Fortuna" is the title theme to
fan compilation.
The series has its own lyrics for "Ave Satani" as the Bakura Show theme song:
It's The — Bakura Show — He Is — Evil — He's So Evil — He Once Killed — A Puppy — It Was Cute
The eight episode also played it for Bakura's first major appearance, with each statement followed by chanting to emphasize how
"O Fortuna" was used to foretell the coming of .
In episode 45 just before
the epic duel between Bakura and Melvin, we get some Ominous Brooklyn Chanting, followed by some actual chanting during the credits
&&&&Films — Animation&
The soundtrack to the film
contains a great deal of ominous chanting, but most of it is in barely-intelligible Japanese. Nemure, AKIRA, nemure... At the end, though, in that track they actually do
has Ominous Japanese Chanting in the tune "The World of the Dead", which plays when the Forest Spirit's death goop is covering everything.
films make heavy use of Ominous Japanese Chanting — an antequated form of Japanese, no less.
In the trailer of the
movie, "O Fortuna" plays as the boys see Cartman's mom on the cover of "Crack Whore Magazine."
Darla Dimple's
Max gets an ominous chanting to accompany his wall-smashing entrance in
— as though the red-tint, and the screaming reactions from the crew wasn't enough to show that Max is one scary dude. If you listen closely, it sounds like the chorus may be . "How does the kitty-cat go?" And Darla herself gets some as background in "Big and Loud".
In , animals chant in Swahili/distorted English as they try to coax Melman into killing himself to appease the gods.
The Ralph Bakshi cartoon version of
strangely uses ominous gibberish with the words "Isengard" and "" peppered in, rather than actually use any Tolkien language.
. Considering the setting, it's unsurprising that a lot of the background score is based on Old-World church music, but the Latin vocals only make an appearance when someone's about to find themselves in serious trouble. Some awesome
Non confundar in aeternum (Let me not be damned for eternity —
during Esmeralda's execution as a witch)
Libera me Domine de morte aeterna (Free me, Lord, from everlasting death)/ In die illa tremenda (On that terrible day)/ Quando caeli movendi sunt (When the heavens shall be moved)/ Caeli et terra (The heavens and earth)/ Dum veneris judicare (When Thou shalt come to judge)/ Saeculum per ignem (the world by fire — during Quasimodo's breaking free of the chains)
Sit sempiterna gloria (May glory be eternal)/ Gloria, gloria semper (Glory, glory forever)/ Sanctus, sanctus in excelsis (Holy, holy, in the highest — when Quasimodo climbs the cathedral and claims sanctuary for Esmeralda)
Quem patronum rogaturus ("To what protector shall I appeal")/ Cum vix justus sit securus? ("When scarcely the just man shall be secure?" — when Phoebus leads the charge toward the cathedral.) These lines (and the lines in the entry below) come from the well-known 13th century Gregorian chant .
Confutatis maledictis (When the accursed shall be cast down)/ Flammis acribus addictis (Given to the searing flames — when Frollo is about to fall off of Notre D Frollo actually quotes this line in English just before falling, too, albeit not in those exact words)
More examples can be found in the lyrics to "The Bells of Notre Dame" (Latin chanting during Frollo's chase describes the "day of trembling" when "the Judge is come,") and Frollo's , "Hellfire."
Very cleverly used in "Hellfire". The interlude between Quasimodo's "" and Frollo's "Hellfire" is an excerpt from Confiteor, a Latin prayer for confessions of sin. The Confiteor continues into "Hellfire", offering some intentional
in the first few lines of the song. Most notably, when Frollo tries to claim innocence for his lustful thoughts:
Frollo: It's not my fault! Choir: Mea culpa ([It is] My fault) Frollo: I'm not to blame! Choir: Mea culpa ([It is] My fault) Frollo: It was that gypsy girl, that witch who sent this flame! Choir: Mea maxima culpa ([It is] My most grievous fault) Frollo: It's not my fault Choir: Mea culpa Frollo: If in God's plan Choir: Mea culpa Frollo: He made the devil so much stronger than a man! Choir: Mea maxima culpa!
One of the primary "dark/ominous" motifs in the film uses the phrase Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy") — technically Ominous Greek Chanting, but the effect is the same. The movie practically makes this phrase into Frollo's .
The Dies Irae itself gets play during one of the most terrifying sequences, when Frollo is tearing the city apart and burning people's houses down to try to get to Esmeralda, culminating in burning Paris down.
Quantus tremor est futurus quando iudex est venturus cuncta stricte discussurus ("How much tremor there will be when the Judge will come investigating everything strictly" — when Quasimodo's mother is running to get away from Frollo.)
And, appropriately to the movie, most of these lines come from the Requiem Mass. "Libera Me" comes from the p the latter two come from "Dies Irae", which is not so much ominous as outright terrifying. "Sit sempiterna gloria," however, is a line from Thomas Aquinus' "O Salutaris," which is a Eucharistic Adoration hymn.
The Pixar short film "Jack-Jack Attack" on
DVD makes use of "Dies Irae".
It is also included within Hans Zimmer's score for the wildebeest stampede and Mufasa's death scene in . For bonus points, this same score (titled "To Die For...") also includes excerpts of 's Requiem when Simba finds his father's body. The only thing
lacks is actual Ominous Latin Chanting — there's plenty of
but it's hardly ominous (except perhaps the Zulu which is set to the "Dies Irae").
The opening credits of
are accompanied by Ominous Chanting to the tune of Shirley Walker's memorable B:TAS theme. The chorus, once again, is actually chanting the last names of production team members backwards.
An even more intense version of Mozart's "Mass in C Minor — Kyrie" plays during the impressive storm at sea scene in .
The chanting's in English, not Latin, but that doesn't stop the chorus in "Plagues" and their description of what God's gonna do to the Egyptians from being scary. When they say that the pestilence won't stop "until you break/until you yield," you believe it.
Chorus: "I send the swarm/I send the horde!"/Thus saith the Lord!
The number "Playing With the Big Boys Now", starts with Ramses' priests Hotep and Hoi(Steve Martin and Martin Short)(?) chanting the names of various Egyptian deities. The chanting can be heard later in the background.
has the equally ominous, joyful (yes, you can be ominous and joyful at the same time) and awesome "Transformation." Not Latin — accurate Inuktitut! Sang by the Bulgarian's Women's Choir, no less.
You know what goes well with chanting?
naturally had some ominous chanting in Atlantean.
Naseithi basathos...
Nasani batha
Harutani strata
Nasetani kataan
Haanathaa Atland
Naseitha sethos
Haretana sanaalan!
has a few "aah's" that are heard during scenes with the Pure Ones and sometimes with Soren. Chanting can be heard when Metalbeak tries to kill Soren.
The 2009 animated
featured a chorus in the final action scenes, chanting a limerick about the villains:
Chorus: Boggis, Bunce, and Bean / One fat, one short, one lean / These horrible crooks / So different in looks / Were nonetheless equally mean.
satirizes this trope while playing it straight. Listen closely in the underwater sequence to find that the choir are simply chanting, "under the sea" or even "Lego." Even operatic "yo ho." In addition, during Lord Business's fight with Vitruvius at the start of the film, you can hear them sing, "See all the Lego."
uses a similar satirical approach to its predecessor. When the Joker is sent to the , you can actually hear the choir literally saying "The Phantom Zone".
The first half of "Armageddon" in
features a sinister-sounding man singing in Latin. In translation, featured in the CD booklet, he's singing about the horrors of Armageddon. Some segments of the song also feature the more traditional background chanting.
&&&&Films — Live-Action&
The trailer songs for the .
John Williams' now-classic "Duel of the Fates" from the
saga is , with the lyrics consisting of a Welsh poem sung in Sanskrit. Apparently it's about trees going to war or something. Williams admitted that the lyrics have no intended meaning, they just . Williams repeated his success in Episode III with "Battle of the Heroes". The Sanskritified lyrics come from the artistic-license-tastic translation of an old Welsh poem, The Battle of the Trees, as done by Robert Graves for his book The White Goddess: "Under the tongue root a fight most dread/And another raging behind, in the head."
related movie and the occasional Hun-themed flick will have the Mongolian form of this trope, traditional Tuvan throat singing accompanied by a warlike drum track. Not to mention the fact that spoken Mongol is probably one of the most ominous sounding languages in existence.
Mozart's Dies Irae is used in
film version of .
used "", an original piece inspired by "O Fortuna" as the theme for the young antichrist Damien. It's a a dark inversion of Schubert's uplifting "Ave Maria".
Spoofed in the
film, where "O Fortuna" plays during the intro, which consists of the cast members careening down a street in an oversized shopping cart with rocks being shot at them.
Spoofed when members of the conspiracy are discovered chanting Latin.
states the words are "bonum commune communitatis," "for the greater good of the community."
Played straight with the inclusion of "Dies Irae" in the run-up to
Tim Messenger's death.
Sergei Eisenstein's
is perhaps the original instance.
are accompanied by an ominous Latin chorus, which rises in a crescendo during the battle scene. This made sense because the Teutons were evil Catholics fighting the goodguy Eastern Orthodox Russians in the highly propagandistic film. Prokofiev's film music for this sounds similar enough to "O Fortuna" that it may have inspired the use of Orff's Carmina Burana in movies. (The Orff piece was written earlier — by one year.) The chanted words: "Peregrinus expectavi pedes meos in cymbalis" themselves are snipped from Stravinsky's A Symphony of Psalms. Prokofiev, however, evidently realized no-one in the audiences would know Latin, because the words are randomly chosen from the Psalms, and mean, when read as one sentence: "I as a stranger awaited my feet on cymbals"
Subverted in Branagh's . The
is in Latin, but instead of ominous, it's meant to sound hopeful and triumphant after the big battle sequence.
Mozart's "Dies Irae" underscores Nightcrawler's attack on the White House in .
Verdi's "Dies Irae" is the main opening theme to the
film. It also sees play during the attack of the Regulators (the forerunners of ) in .
films heavily featured dramatic Latin music — despite there being no Latin in Cimmeria. See for example .
Ominous Latin-Sounding Gibberish plays when Queen Narissa enters the real world in ... and every time she uses her evil magic.
uses "In Paradisum" from Gabriel Faur& at the beginning. Other parts of the movie feature Ominous Melanesian Chanting.
Used occasionally in
The freeway scene in
features "Mona Lisa Overdrive" by Juno Reactor, with Sanskrit chanting from "Navras," also by Juno Reactor & Don Davis.
The final battle in
has some extremely Ominous Sanskrit Chanting in the background, although thematically it's rather positive: "And when he is seen in his immanence and transcendence, then the ties that have bound the heart are unloosened, the doubts of the mind vanish, and the law of Karma works no more." As the Wachowskis put it, "We couldn't very well have the choir chanting, 'This is the One, look at what he can do,' could we?"
movies feature ominous chanting in a variety of languages, including the languages that Tolkien made up himself as the main purpose of writing the stories in the first place. Some of the songs were even composed by Tolkien himself.
The Ad&naic chanting when the Nazg&l made their appearance is quite ominous in spite of being a "good" (i.e. Elven) language, being based on Latin and Finnish in about equal measure.
B&r& 'n Nidir n&n&kham. (The Lords, the Nine, we approach.)
N&b&b&tham mag&nan&. (We deny our maker.)
N&tabdam d&urad. (We cling to the gloom.)
At two places in Fellowship you can hear parts of the Ring poem (though not those in the Ring inscription) sung in Black Speech, the lingua franca of Mordor. Perhaps surprisingly, these aren't used for Sauron, the Ring or Mordor (which have their own leitmotifs, but no lyrics), but for Saruman's lust for the Ring and its power.
The movies are also notable for the skilful use of a deep-voiced Polynesian choir during the definitely ominous Balrog scene.
One of the themes commonly used in evil-is-winning battle/chase moments begins with the words "Balin! Khazad-d&m!", which is likely Khuzdul (Dwarvish), and if not, is at least speaking of dwarves (Balin being a lord of the dwarves and Khazad-d&m being the Khuzdul name for Moria).
One piece played in Moria is essentially "O Fortuna" with Dwarvish instead of Latin (). The lyrics are notable for being as ominous as they sound:
Urkhas tanakhi! Lu! Lu! (The demon comes! No! No!)
K&min takalladi! Lu! Lu! (The earth shakes! No! No!)
Ugr&d tashniki kurdum&! Lu! Lu! (Fear rips our heart! No! No!) ...
Urus ni askad gabil ? (Fire in a great shadow ?)
Urus ni buzra. (Fire in the deep.) ...
Arr&s talbabi fillum&! Fillum&! (Flames lick our skin! Our skin!)
Ugr&d tashniki kurdum&! Kurdum&! (Fear rips our heart! Our heart!)
Urkhas tanakhi. (The demon comes.)
Most of the music in the Howard Shore score that features lyrics has some level of , whether in Quenya, Khuzdul, or the Black Speech, which is often relevant to the scene depicted.
Though Howard Shore was provided with full translations for the lyrics he used, he didn't always follow them linearly in the score, and sometimes they ended up quite chopped up. Plus mispronounced (the Sindarin rovail [wings] and naur [fire], in the battle at the Black Gate, should be pronounced as "roh-vile" and "nowr", not "roh-veel" and "noor").
's score for 's Looking For Richard featured Latin translations of lines from 's . It was quite effective.
movie , Ominous backward English Chanting is used for the 's evil space laser. The phrase, according to the composer, is "look at the size of that umbrella."
has a chorus that chants his name.
uses this trope throughout the movie, sometimes backed up with techno. The most pronounced is during the Il Duce firefight, which is accompanied by the same chanting that opened the movie.
The first transformation of Johnny Blaze into
is backed up by this chanting.
While not actual chanting, the opening driving sequence to
is backed by a very slow version of "Dies Irae".
The flagellants from Bergman's
sing the "Dies Irae," with lyrics "Pie Iesu domine, dona eis Requiem," translated, "Gracious Lord Jesus, grant them rest."
include a likely parody of The Seventh Seal by including a group of flagellant Benedictines who chant "Pie Iesu" while bonking themselves on the head with wooden boards. "Pie Iesu" is later used to add majesty to the Holy Hand Grenade.
The 2007 live-action
film features a basso and an alto choir in counterpoint to each other being used for the Decepticon theme. Also used for the theme when Blackout attacks the base and when Megatron thaws.
Artists X-Ray Dog and Globus and others specialize in music for film and trailers, often featuring a lot of this chanting.
for the title
is backed by Ominous Russian Chanting — complete with
— to form a .
In : , during the massive battle there is ominous chanting.
In the finale to , the three-way battle between Frankie, Mike, and Grace is backed by this chanting.
In the 1963 film of , the choir approach
"Kyrie eleison" repeatedly, in upbeat mood, accompanying a rather triumphant sounding trumpet. It sounds ominous only in retrospect (). Ironically, "Kyrie eleison" is part of the Catholic mass and translates to "Lord, have mercy."
is more what it would sound like in the traditional Latin rite.
There is plenty of Ominous Hindi Chanting during . "Kali ma shukti de!"
In , the snake cult chants ominously in some dead language during their climactic ritual. A lot of their lyrics are merely the name of the cult, "Rame Tep".
John Boorman's
features one of the more famous uses of "O Fortuna" during battle sequences.
The main title theme for the Francis Ford Coppola film
features a chorus whispering and hissing on pitch in both Latin and Romanian.
This trope (usually substituting another language for Latin, though) shows up in a number of
films, including — but not nearly limited to — , and .
features Ominous Hopi Chanting. Both it and its sequels (Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi) feature the film's title chanted (although in Powaqqatsi it's more joyful than ominous), but there are additional Hopi chants in Koyaanisqatsi, which are translated at the end of the film, on screen, as:
If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster. Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky. A container of ashes
one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.
In the opening tune, and during the climactic battle in , the enchanted armour sing the words of the 'substitutiary locomotion' spell that is animating them ("Treguna mekoides trecorum satis dee."). The effect is actually quite chilling.
Craig Armstrong's "Escape" from Plunkett and Macleane starts out as ominous and quite mournful, it being played as Macleane is about to get hanged, but soon turns into a driving and triumphant score when Plunkett gets his
on and rescues him.
: "Justice is dead!... or so Jay thinks!"
Parodied in 's Love and Death, during the battle scene, with the battle music from .
Listen to the music that plays during
when we see the Omega 13 in all its glory. Go on, you know you want to.
Downplayed in . A short sound clip of this chanting plays when Brennan sees Dale's drum set (on which Dale has a strict '' policy) sitting in the latter's room. It plays again when Dale, inspecting his drum set - suspecting it to have been tampered with - finds one of his drumsticks damaged. Cue the quarrel.
John Barry's music for
makes liberal use of this trope.
The soundtrack for
is made up of something that sounds like this chanting, but it's also kind of pretty. Special mention goes to .
features, as the monolith music, Ligeti's Requiem mass. The lyrics are "K&rie, el& Christ&, el& K&rie, el&ison", repeated in a loop — except each syllable is dragged a lot, and the different vocal ensembles don't sing together, adding to the confusion. His composition "Lux Aeterna" also appears, as the background music during Heywood Floyd's trip to the moon. It's not as ominous, though.
had epic "".
The trailer for
(albeit a tecno-ish remix).
A main source of
Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, ostensibly a documentary about nuclear testing, is an excuse to show lots of really big explosions set to Ominous (Russian?) Chanting.
In French movie ,
chanting is part of main theme: . Fitting with the Middle Age setting, but less with the movie genre, which is a comedy.
Used in . Hans Zimmer put
that allowed anyone to record themselves doing the chanting he used in . The Arabic phrase used as the chant, Deshi Basara, translates as "he rises" and is very thematically important. It's also used in-universe as a chant in Bane's prison when someone tries to make the climb to escape.
: the masked ball scene contains diagetic music using an Orthodox liturgy chanted in Romanian and played backwards to make it more otherworldly.
Mission: Impossible
has a rather punny and particularly memorable Ominous Russian Chanting piece entitled "".
had some of this chanting when the
kills what he presumes to be Ethan Hunt, only to find that he ended up killing his own ...
has . While it's mostly a , the lyrics are in Latin and gives a rather haunting feel.
had Ominous Latin Chanting, except of course instead of Latin, the phrase "" was chanted.
In , Gy&rgy Ligeti's very creepy, very ominous "Requiem" (which had previously been most closely associated with ) plays during the HALO jump. It was also used in almost all of the trailers for the film.
uses what sounds like Ominous Klingon Chanting during the aerial chase over the Ketha Province of Qo'noS.
and one of its action sequences features "Dies Irae". It also gets used after the Bullet Farmer is blinded and he starts shooting in a mad rage.
has the chanting heard during the climactic battle between Rexie and the I-rex.
When Dom and Shaw start fighting in , chanting can be heard.
has what appears on the surface to be a standard Catholic Latin Mass, but it is framed and shot to be very ominous, complete with a
played by . Turns out it's a Satanic "black mass."
Parodied in 's short film Shevenge, where the lead characters apparently don't know any actual latin.
(Chanting) Latin latin latin... Latin latin latin...
: Zdeněk Li?ka's brilliant dark, ominous and rapid chanting score.
has a brief chanting of "Agnus Dei" when Hale finds himself stranded in the Utah desert.
&&&&Literature&
novel Storm of Iron, the lead Chaos Titan is named Dies Irae.
Averted in
where Latin chanting is (usually) a good sign and a contrast to the wailing screams of agony heard in hell.
series, utter polyglot nonsense was chanted by impostors-masquerading-as-exorcists, surprisingly, to quite the opposite effect. It summoned something unidentified. Which then immediately possessed the village idiot.
book series has Ominous Hebrew And Greek Chanting, as the demon locust swarm that emerges during one of God's Trumpet Judgments chants "Abaddon" and "Apollyon" in their respective languages.
the heroes choose at one point to massacre hundreds of liberal intellectuals for the crime of "Cultural Marxism." To make sure the message isn't lost, they do so wielding short swords and wearing Crusader surplices. To make extra sure, they bring in a live choir to chant Dies Irae while they work, and the somewhat less ominous Non Nobis as they leave.
&&&&Live-Action TV&
The Japanese gameshow subtly titled
includes hints of Ominous (probably Japanese) Chanting when the scientists are placing the final fish on the ground. The show also features unnecessarily awesome music when the cats manage to escape with the increasingly larger fish, and some Metal when each cat gets knocked out in the final round. If you've no idea what it's about, go watch the video already.
"O Fortuna" was also used during the series finale of the cult favourite TV show, .
Ominous Latin Chanting is used in the 3rd season episode "Demons". However, that episode was about a group of Middle Ages humans being threatened by , so it's rather appropriate.
In later seasons, there's plenty of Ominous Latin Chanting related to the , as well as in the direct-to-DVD movies.
The titular Hopi chant from the movie
plays every time
gives someone the
in . May God have mercy on the one who receives it.
used Ave Satani for the "" that were:
Starbucks being closed for three hours.
smiling more than ten times during the State of the Union address.
Jon Stewart revealing his true identity as the Antichrist
or possibly Conrad Bain.
They also used "O Fortuna" to accompany footage of
The Atlantean cult in "The Underwater Menace" chant ominously in a gibberish language ("waa-aa-tuu-aah waa-aa-tuu-aah Wah! Wah! Wah!") while performing religious rituals (like chaining the Doctor and his companions on top of a shark pit). It is combined on the soundtrack with dissonant electronic hits and a creepy organ.
Ominous Buddhist chanting ("Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ!") is used to summon the giant spiders in "Planet of the Spiders".
In the revived series, the first appearance of a massive Dalek army is accompanied by Ominous Hebrew Chanting. (The words are reported to be a translation of "What is happening?", which apart from being an appropriate response to the situation is also a Dalek .) The words are "Mah Koreh, Mah Mah Koreh" (what's happening, what, what's happening) repeated over and over again. .
A moment in the following season's finale, featuring the use of the Dalek's Genesis Arc — sending millions of Daleks against the 5 million Cybermen that have already taken over the world winds up using the prerequisite chanting as well.
And then of course, there's "The Dark and Endless Dalek Night", which contains a mixture of Ominous Latin and Terrifying Hebrew Chanting.
In "Tooth And Claw", the bald monks chant "Lupus Deus est" — 'the wolf is god' — as the moon rises.
And in "The End of Time, Part 2", the Ood sing
"Vale Decem" (Farewell, Ten) as Ten regenerates.
The Headless Monks of "A Good Man Goes to War" have a decidedly unsettling chant/song they perform before they attack. How they manage to chant, given that , is anyone's guess.
The Borg's first appearance in the "Best of Both Worlds" episode of
is accompanied by an awesome sounding synthesized choir (appropriate for the Borg's artificial nature).
As much mournful as ominous, the words in the opening credits (in all TV airings on UK television, and from season 2 onwards in the U.S.) are actually a Sanskrit prayer known as the Gayatri Mantra, considered to be the holiest verse in the Vedas, the founding texts of Hinduism. Roughly translated into English it reads:
Oh God! Giver of life, earth and sky
That heavenly light which must be worshipped
Let us attain the radiance of God
May our thoughts bring us ever forward into light
Gaius Baltar's new theme is in Old English. Translated, it's a . Okay. then...
Baltar also listens to a hilarious Italian opera way back in the first season:
Woe upon your Cylon heart.
There's a toaster in your head.
And it wears high heels.
Number Six calls to you.
The Cylon Detector beckons.
Your girlfriend is a toaster.
"Kobol's Last Gleaming" from the season 1 soundtrack contains proper latin chanting, using the words "Ita Dicimus Omnes", "".
In addition to the above, also mocked on . "Featuring the Bulgarian Women's Choir edition of 'Jingle Bells'!"
And again with Werewolf, where they take the Ominous Native American Chanting sung over the credits and sing .
Done by the characters themselves in Gamera when
The theme for
is sung in Latin.
Used in the
whenever the dramatic moment needs a extra kick.
In , when Sensei Ping does the Wu-han Thumb of Death, it's accompanied by the "Dies Irae" from the Mozart Requiem (along with stock footage of ).
: "Into The Lion's Den", the climax (if not the ) of the third season, had two original tracks of this chanting, "Salve Me" and "Lacrimosa". Both are available at , and both are .
Played with in
in which a
(though to be fair, the entire organization was corrupt too) played this chanting on a personal CD player in his office whenever he was on the job. The situation didn' he could be planning world domination or just relaxing after a hard hour's work, but the Chanting would still be belting out at full volume. Thanks to the show having a serious tone 99% of the time, this came off as more creepy than humorous.
The opening credits to
had a real church choir singing the Latin for "Behold the man who is a bean", "End of part one", "Part two", and "Farewell, man who is a bean".
The theme to the darkly humorous Danish television series
(of which 's
is a remake) mixed genuine Latin phrases with gibberish, counting to seven in English and slow spelling of the word "rectum" . Even the legitimate Latin is nonsense ("speculum et cetera"; "mirror and so forth").
An episode of
features apocalyptic Latin chanting to reveal a cute dog lying with bamboo on Tim's bed, as he has a fear of both.
(yes, the reality show) has done this with a generally unliked contestant (somewhere between quirky, insane, and power-hungry) doing yoga in the rain (complete with ominous lightning and thunder) as "O Fortuna" plays in the background.
's pilot had Ominous Medieval Italian Chanting.
In the new Discovery Channel series Wild Tropics, whenever the sharks or other dangerous predators show up the music shifts to Ominous Polynesian Chanting
Ominous Chanting is quite common on , though it's so indistinct that it's hard to tell whether or not it's Latin. Or what they're saying. It's very old English according to the DVD extras.
Invoked on
— for when things like
just aren't epic enough.
has this. Usually, though, it isn't so much chanting as speaking it to perform spells and/or do rituals.
In one particular case in Season Two, it was ominous Italian opera when
Giles discovered that Angelus had killed Jenny Calender. The moment is also another Whedon example of
While good characters are shown to use magic in the show, as a rule the good guys (okay, 'girls') cast spells in what is actually intentionally-badly-pronounced Italian (so it sounds ancient), whereas the bad guys
e.g. Warren use Latin chants.
The straightest example of this comes in a flashback when the still human Drusilla enters a church for confession, and is encountered by Angelus who just ate the priest. The background chorus sings , an old eucharist hymn, presumably from , with some variations.
Gaelic is a rare variation.
Same goes for
with its various exorcisms and rituals, not only in Latin, but sometimes even in Enochian.
The soundtrack for
includes a fair amount of random choral chanting (although a lot of it is just oohs and aahs).
Once a player goes to the third level ($50,000 and beyond) on the game show , the background thinking music starts to sounds more and more dramatic, with a choir chant playing over top of the music. However, the background music for the $1,000,000 question is a complete subversion, instead consisting of just a low, deep bass note, a drum hit, and a heartbeat.
Parodied in an episode of Bullshit, which opens with a chant of ""
Ominous Nonsense Chanting found its way into
in the Dahak story arc. Actual Latin found its way into the story with the Four Horsemen.
for Renaissance Pictures (which appears on
and ) uses this as music, accompanying visuals of lightning bolts and a Mona Lisa-like picture being ripped in half.
Hannity's America on
has been known to use Carmina Burana as a cold opening sometimes, usually to a montage of "sinister" goings-on amongst (usually) Democratic political figures in Washington, D.C. Apparently it's supposed to be funny, although Hannity's America is generally serious.
Another "hard to tell if it's Latin or not" but the : The Series episode "The Immortal Cimmoli"
Licat volare si super tergum
volat - A man can fly where he will, if he rides on the back of
Parodied on . When Barney pressures Ted to swear an oath to him as his bro (a "bro oath" or "broath"), he lends the ceremony some extra solemnity by playing a recording of some chanting monks. It takes Ted a couple minutes to realize the monks are actually just chanting the word "bro" .
For the most part in , practicioners of Good Magic cast spells in English Rhyme, whereas Dark Magic was done in Latin.
variation when
goes to Bebe's hotel room and there's a choir singing outside the window. While she tries to seduce him, he throws open the window to get some air just as the choir hits a particularly ominous crescendo, accompanied by sweeping red floodlights.
: Done by the evil Satanic cult in "The Devils".
Spoofed in
III, where the sacrifice cult is accompanied by this kind of music, but the lyrics are just inane things like video game titles, brand names and politicians ("ESTE&E LAUDER!" "SUPER MARIO!" "DAVID MILIBAND!")
has ominous chanting, only it is in Old Norse.
Happens on the original Japanese , whenever the Iron Chefs rise to the stage.
The miniseries adaptation of
has Ominous Latin Chanting out the wazoo, with a few "abracadabra"s thrown in for good measure.
is the most prominent example.
Sator arepo tenet opera rotas
Igni natura renovatur integra
INRI, INRI, abracadabra...
: Done by a secret society meeting in a desanctified church in .
in the game show
is that the hosts will imitate Ominous Latin Chanting whenever a round goes to a tie-break.
&&&&Music&
Slovenian Industrial band Laibach bypassed ominous, going straight to nightmare fuel unleaded with "Vade Retro Satanas" from their album Nova Akropola. ""
German electronica band
uses a lot of Ominous Latin Chanting — with good results. Then they combine it with the guttural voice of a Chain-Smoking German to make it even more sinister. "" is a perfect example of just how epic this trope can be.
The song "Kann denn Liebe S&nde Sein" by the German metal band Eisbrecher has this in the beginning, but it's in German.
B-Movie sample pioneer Rob Zombie has used this technique in a couple songs, more notably in the White Zombie song "Super-Charger Heaven" (supposedly using a Latin excommunication trial).
Most power-metal albums, especially those with a fantasy theme. Any "" album starts off with a choir chanting ominous Latin gibberish.
"" from "Dawn Of Victory" is an excellent example of Ominous English Chanting.
While primarily instrumental, the band
employs vocal tracks on each of its albums. Almost all of those vocal tracks are in ominous Latin, as befits the band's name. Winter's Knight includes Gregorian hymns, which are neither intended nor played as ominous, but they have a somewhat spooky effect regardless. Necronomicon also has plenty of ill-boding chanting, but it's . Blood of the Dragon is in the fantasy genre, not horror, but it still uses plenty of "O Fortuna"-inspired chanting throughout the album (particularly in the title track, where the influence is so obvious it's ridiculous). According to composer Joseph Vargo, most of the post-"Blood of the Dragon" albums contain pseudo-Latin Chanting.
In the penultimate scene of
La damnation de Faust, a male chorus chants in a made-up demonic language ("Ha! Irimiru Karabrao!") as Mephistopheles triumphantly brings Faust into Pandaemonium. The final scene is set in the other place, where a
welcomes Marguerite.
showed they were just as capable of this as anyone else, with the "Atom Heart Mother Suite." It's a tangled mess of steel guitar, cellos, a brass band, organ and a lot of chanting in made-up languages, varying from merely otherworldly to absolutely doom-laden. Bonus points for having both male and female choirs in one piece.
Puccini's , at the end of Act I, with the Latin prayers underscoring the nefarious schemes of corrupt chief of police and sexual predator Scarpia, though the prayers themselves culminate in the first lines of the Te Deum, which is usually considered . More ominously, Spoletta mumbles a few lines from the "Dies Irae" during the torture scene in Act II.
(based on a Chinese fairytale) has the chorus (singing in Italian) playing the people of Beijing, reflecting the changing moods of the crowd, first as a frenzied mob screaming for blood, then cheering the Unknown Prince on as he successfully answers the princess' riddles, and pleading with slave-girl Li&, who has killed herself, to reveal the prince's name. Especially at the death of Li&, the sound of the chorus is chilling.
Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov has . Many opera lovers consider the chorus to be one of the main characters, and they get their own curtain call. Their prayers, mob scenes, and laments, sung in Russian, sound spooky as well as heartrending, particularly at the death of Boris. At several points, some really ominous Latin chanting is heard.
The band Enigma combines Gregorian-esque chants with ethereal electronic sound effects. The album "The Screen Behind the Mirror" samples Carmina Burana — so much so that it could be said to be Carmina Burana with samples of Enigma. It was one of the few times where the original publishers sanctioned its use.
The band Gregorian plays covers of popular songs in a Gregorian-chant vocal style with modern instrumentation. There are a few of their songs which feature Ominous Latin Chanting including their cover of the inevitable "" and their original, "".
While Swedish symphonic metal band Therion does not always implement Ominous Chanting into their songs, almost all of them have choirs singing in some capacity. They, too, have covered "". Other songs like "Seven Secrets of the Sphinx", "Via Nocturna", or "The Wondrous World Of Punt" may also fit this trope.
Although in English, AFI's "Miseria Cantare" tells you that Sing The Sorrow's plot (it is a concept album) is not going to have a happy ending. Yeah, the lyrics are nihilistic, but it is the background chorus and eerie music that show you the magnitude of the unhappy life the main character of the plot is going to have.
Brazilian power metal band Angra employed this in their song "Acid Rain", first to open the song, then to mark the passage from the bridge to the guitar solo.
"Warszawa" on the album Low, by , has a long chanting sequence, made of Bowie overdubbing his own voice in several keys. Ominous, yes, and quite appropriately based on an old Polish composition, but the actual lyrics are gibberish.
use it in the songs "Whisper" and "Lacrymosa," as well as the unreleased song "Anything for You." Whisper's lyrics translated are, "Save us from danger, save us from evil," and the other two are just from the "Lacrimosa" section of the Requiem mass.
Enya's Tempus Vernum is entirely Ominous Latin Chanting, which is essentially a list of pairs of opposites. ("Therefore, the earth and the stars. Therefore, the east and the west...")
Pax Deorum and Cursum Perficio. Enya seems to like this trope a lot.
She's also very fond of Gaelic (not surprising at all, given her musical and cultural background), and for Amarantine even developed an artificial language — complete with its own script — for those moments when neither Latin nor Gaelic met the dramatic requirements.
Power/thrash metal band Iced Earth has the 16-minute epic Dante's Inferno, based on, well, . It has sections of what sounds like this trope, although songwriter Jon Schaffer has admitted that it's just gibberish invented to sound evil. This chanting also shows up in the songs
(based on the movie ) , and . Also in the middle of their song "" (Dies Natalis, Odisse, Mortalis).
Demons & Wizards also uses this: "" starts with chanting choirs and "Chant," the outro on their first album is a (pseudo?) Gregorian chant that Hansi K&rsch made by multi-tracking his voice. For Hansi, the second album by his main band, , opens with "Inquisition": Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem chanted repeatedly. (This is the same as the chanting in .) It' the first song is about John the Baptist.
Inversion: "Orchestral metal" group Trans-Siberian Orchesta's rock opera Beethoven's Last Night features some chanting of this kind, but it's generally uplifting and set to a variation of Ode to Joy. The piece has the
reflecting on his life and career, and how his music has affected the world.
The more traditional version makes its appearance in "Requiem (The Fifth)" from said rock opera, which, as its name implies, is a mash-up of Mozart's Requiem and
Fifth Symphony.
combines, to wonderfully creepy effect, ominous chanting with dialogue from the movie "Halloween" and a trip-hop beat.
"O Fortuna". The piece has been popularly associated with Satanism ever since it was used in .
Which this student of Latin finds saddening, because it's the most awesome piece of musical
you will ever hear.note&
Also from Carmina Burana is "In taberna quando sumus", an Ominous Latin Drinking Song.
See a hilarious animated video with misheard lyrics
's "Dies Irae" from the Requiem gets almost as much play as "O Fortuna" in dramatic situations. Unlike most of the pieces on this page, though, it has the thematic weight to match its ominous tone when translated: the lyrics are describing the Apocalypse. In fact, the "Dies Irae" from practically any Requiem Mass qualifies by definition as this trope. Especially
The original Dies Irae Gregorian chant is pretty freakin' spooky all on its own.
Adiemus, a classical piece by Karl Jenkins, isn't technically Latin (the composer invented all the "words" himself), but it's spine-tingling awesome.
His pieces containing real latin chanting are even more ominous, like
from Requiem or
from The Armed Man.
frequently incorporate chanting in Latin and other languages into their music, usually to .
album Unearthed and you're less likely to find a song without this type of chanting. The reason behind their use of it is the fact that the songs are all about dead civilizations and ruined cities of the ancient world.
A Song For Europe by Roxy Music has Bryan Ferry repeating the song's last couplet in French, then in Latin.
The song "Sister of Charity" by Finnish Gothic-Rock band The 69 Eyes contains repeated usage of this trope, made even more ominous coupled with the deep bass voice of the singer. The Latin words translate to "Between hope and fear... Charity in war".
Some Latin chants are so well known in classical music that they can be quoted in an instrumental piece without the words being used. The most ominous of these chants is the Gregorian Dies Irae. Examples of its many uses appear in the Witches' Sabbath movement of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Camille Saint-Sa&ns's Danse macabre and third symphony, Sergei Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Franz Liszt's Totentanz. Or in "Making Christmas" from . Or as part of "".
Era, while very fond of the Latin Chanting, isn't usually Ominous. But then there's Enae Volare Mezzo, which is probably one of the sexiest sounding examples of this trope ever. There's also Ameno which manges to be genuinely ominous and creepy.
The French prog rock band Magma uses ominous chanting in many of their songs. They even made up their own language for it, called Kobian.
Our Solemn Hour by
("San-ctus Espiri-tus...").
implements chanting in a few of their songs on their album Imaginaerum.
"Saltwater" by Chicane features ominous Gaelic chanting, sampled from the
of Harry's Game.
"Four Seasons" by Blue Amazon also uses a Gaelic-sounding chant.
Epica has a whole album in which each features at least one verse with Ominous Latin Chanting.
All of their intros (with the exception of the largely instrumental "The Score: An Epic Journey") begin with Latin C some songs that feature ominous chanting are "" and "" (Ominous English Chanting) and "" (Ominous Latin Chanting). "" may feature Ominous Arabic Chanting.
As mentioned in
entry above, the Juno Reactor songs "Mona Lisa Overdrive"(Kyrie Eleison) and "Navras"(ominous Sanskrit chanting).
's "Underneath" and "First Heart Attack" (the first and last track from the album ''Old') feature sampled, wordless chanting, courtesy of Richard Swift's mellotron.
"Memories in a Sea of Forgetfulness" by BT uses (not so ominous) Arabic/Muslim chanting, which sounds like the Adhan prayer call. Also, "Firewater" has the Muslim chant "La illah illa Allah" ("I bear witness to no god but Allah").
"Scorched Blood" by Xorcist has this.
Vangelis has used the ominous singing, more often sounding closer to Greek but can evoke Latin and sometimes other languages (like Egyptian Arabic in one of the Blade Runner cues, courtesy of one-time bandmate Demis Roussos). Examples of this includes Heaven and Hell, Mask, his soundtrack to , Voices, his various El Greco works and Mythodea
There's even a moment when baby sounds are used ... "Message" from Direct
Parodied with the mashup "Crank Dat One Winged Angel", by Valley of Walls.
= the most sinister rap jam you've ever heard.
Ominous German Chanting, admittedly.
by Einsturzende Neubauten. Very awesome. Very creepy.
's "Sign of the Cross", based on
(a work full of priests) opens with one.
Thenote& operetta
accompanies an attack on the hero's home with a new Gregorian chant, which . The chant include the phrase "Agnus Dei, Ora Pro Nobis" ("Lamb of God, pray for us"), which traditional Catholics would consider heretical.note&
The chant was written for the 1970s revival using the music of a pre-existing song, "It Must Be So." Most productions use the instrumental "Battle Music" instead.
Symphonic Metal band Tristania uses this a lot, along with , with fairly epic-sounding effects. The song "" uses a passage from Carmina Burana
As do Morten's side projects Sirenia and Mortemia. "" is essentially a praise chorus to Ominous Latin Chanting while Mortemia is strictly Morten's death grunts and Latin chanting— His formula is demonstrated well in "".
The 1965 Yardbirds B-side "Still I'm Sad" features wordless ominous chanting of the same }