Per Aspera Ad Inferi
Song Meaning

The lyrics suggest “Per Aspera Ad Inferi” is a deliberate inversion of the Latin motto “per aspera ad astra”: where that phrase promises the stars after struggle, this one promises hell, and presents it as the goal worth wanting. The strongest support is the title and chorus themselves, which listeners have read as meaning “Through Hardships to Hell” 1, paired with the plea “Oh, Satan, devour us all.”

The meaning

The song’s thesis sits in its title: it takes a familiar motto about enduring hardship to reach the stars and swaps the destination. Listeners have noted that replacing *astra* (stars, heaven) with *inferi* (hell) turns the phrase into “Through hardships to Hell” 1 2. The chorus is that one line repeated, over and over, so the song works as a chant rather than an argument. It sounds like a liturgy, but one pointed at the wrong altar.

The verses are written in the voice of a preacher, and that is where a rival reading comes in. Some listeners hear the first half as the Church and clergy scolding a believer, with the song split between those who want someone to stay faithful and those pulling them toward Satan 1. “Unholy is the lust in your eyes” and “Perverted are your wishes and dreams” do sound like religious condemnation, and the opening can be taken as the Church labelling sexual desire unholy 1. The same condemnation is read as a warning that following one’s desires ends under Satan’s gaze instead of God’s 1.

But the lyrics do not stay in the scold’s voice. The accusation “Tanning in Lucifer’s beams” is phrased as a sunbathing image, a cozy and almost approving picture of the damned, and the very next section promises “All your dreams will come true.” The condemned desires are not corrected; they are granted. That is why the better reading is that the preacher figure has turned the accusation into an invitation, in a way that mirrors religious consolation: the old promise that suffering is worth it because heaven waits, now aimed at hell instead 2. Both readings can hold at once, since the condemnation is borrowed from the Church and then used against it.

The third verse settles whose side the song is on. “Oh, Satan, devour us all / Hear our desperate call” is a prayer, and the word “us” puts the speaker inside the congregation rather than above it 1. The choir is not being warned about hell; it is asking for it. The “desperate” in that call also matters, because it frames the choice as the end of a long road of hardship, which is exactly what “per aspera” says.

Put together, the song reads as a black-mass hymn that uses the structure of devotion to praise the opposite of devotion. The hardships are the road, the dreams are the reward, and hell is the place the dreams come true. What the repeated chorus adds is the sense of a ritual: heaven’s motto is not rejected so much as taken over, with its promise of payoff after suffering kept intact and only the destination changed 1.

Last updated 2026-10-14 · Request a fresh look at this song