BLIND GUARDIAN: FURTHERING GERMANY’S REPUTATION AS THE LAND OF RACIAL SENSITIVITY

Like my artistic forebearer and Jewish friend, Mel Gibson, I have a hard time telling the difference between the Mayans and the Aztecs, even though they were both subjects of my junior high school social studies class. (Gibson’s film Apocalypto depicts the Mayans, but ends with the arrival of the Spanish a good five hundred years before they were due.)

But I retained enough about both cultures to be 110% certain of this fact: neither the Mayans nor the Aztecs were white.

So. I don’t know if the new Blind Guardian video, “A Voice in the Dark,” is supposed to be portraying the Mayans or the Aztecs, but I do know that the dudes in Blind Guardian apparently don’t know anyone descended from either culture, or even anyone with a decent sun tan. This video is incredibly epic, and good for Blind Guardian and all that, but it really takes you out of it when it looks like the band hired their Uncle Helmut and Cousin Werner to play the high priest and human sacrifice, y’know?

“A Voice in the Dark” comes off of Blind Guardian’s latest album, At the Edge of Time, which comes out August 24 on Nuclear Blast.

-AR