Okay, I’m not going to explain who Apocalyptica are or anything like that, so if you want to understand the contents of which I’m about to spew and are unfamiliar with the awesomeness that is this wonderful band, I suggest you do some research, if not on the band then at least these three particular videos.
Long story short, there is susposedly a trilogy consisting of the songs/videos End of Me, Broken Pieces, and Not Strong Enough from their album Seventh Symphony, and I’m going to share my thoughts with you. I don’t know if any of it will be right or if that’s what the band was trying to say, but this is entirely my opinion and what I got out of it. So without further ado…
The trilogy definitely starts with Not Strong Enough. A lot of people say that End of Me is the beginning but if you watch the videos, it’s clear that End of Me is, well, the end.
First we’re going to establish characters:
I’m going to call the tall women in the videos “Sally”. Lacey Sturm from Broken Pieces is Sally’s “nice side”, so as her alter ego, we’re going to call her “Silly”. I’m not positive, but I think Gavin Rossdale and Brent Smith are supposed to be the same character as well, so we’ll call them “Larry” collectively and I’ll just say specifically what video I’m referring to. The band isn’t part of the story as far I can tell, rather they’re just the story tellers. The extras in the video won’t be specified, as they’re not really characters so much as metaphors throughout the video.
So with that said…Sally suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder. At first I thought it was something like schizophrenia, but in Broken Pieces, it says “I’ve got to turn and run from faces that you never see” and then in the Not Strong Enough video, Sally stands up and four people (the extras) come out from under the dress, i.e. Sally’s multiple personalities. Silly is one of these personalities.
Not Strong Enough is pretty much self-explanatory. Larry can’t keep going down this road Sally is dragging him down. He wants to help because he loves her more than anything, but he knows that to keep sacrificing his happiness and his life for her will eventually be his undoing.
In the chorus it says: “And it’s killing me when you’re away, and I wanna leave and I wanna stay, and I’m so confused; so hard to choose between the pleasure and the pain”. There are good moments to this relationship (side note: I have no idea what they’re relationship is. Family, friends, husband/wife, etc. Don’t have a clue, that’s your guess), and like I said, Larry loves Sally more than anything. He doesn’t want her to suffer, he wants her to be happy and healthy, but at the same time, he knows he can’t fix her. There is nothing he can do to save her. “And I know it’s wrong, and I know it’s right, even if I tried to win the fight, my heart would overrule my mind, and I’m not strong enough to stay away”. He knows it’s wrong because he knows he can’t fix her, but he feels like he’s doing something right by at least trying. And though he says he’s not strong enough to leave, he knows deep down, he’s not quite strong enough to stay either.
Broken Pieces is next in sequence. The thing I hate when other people try to interpret this song/video is that they try to say that Gavin, Brent, and Lacey are all representing just one character, when in fact, Lacey is representing Silly, one of Sally’s many personalities. As I said before, Silly is the nice side. Silly wants to have good, healthy relationships with people, but it’s the other personalities that make this impossible.
“Too late— this is not the answer
I need to pack it in
I can’t pull your heart together with just my voice alone
A thousand shards of glass I came to meet you and,
You cut the peace out of me”
I think in this song, Silly is singing to the other personalities, including Sally. She comes to see Larry thinking that all is well because Silly has been gentle and kind to him, but she comes to surface only to realize that Sally and the others have ruined the relationship, and destroyed her peace of mind. Silly needs to “pack it in”; she needs to have a discussion with the other personalities, because she can’t fix Larry’s heart on her own, because the others will just come back and destroy it yet again.
“And as you ripped it all apart, that’s when I turned to watch you
And as a light in you went dark, I saw you turn to shadow
If I could salvage some part of you that once knew love, but I’m losing this, and I’m losing you”
She’s pretty much watching Sally slowly kill herself, as anything good given to her seems to end up broken and destroyed. If she could salvage Silly’s part of Sally, the nice side that knew how to love, she’d be so much better off.
“Oh, I’ve got to turn and run, from faces that you never see
Oh, I’ve got to save my blood, from all that you’ve broken, and pack up these pieces of me”
Silly has see all the evil the other personalities hold. She sees the heartbreak and destruction they cause, and now she has to save herself and pick up the pieces the others have broken of Sally.
You kind of have to see the perspective from which Silly is coming from. It’s kind of like being accused of a crime you didn’t commit, but the DNA is yours and people saw you commit the crime. Silly has to come to except this, and instead just resorts to picking up the pieces and trying to fix things once more. Imagine four sides of a vase or something. Three of those sides are self-destructive and are always breaking the vase, while Silly is the fourth wall repairing the others time and time again to save herself.
“Too late now to stop the process,
This was your choice— you let it in
This double life you lead is eating you up from within
A thousand shards of glass you pushed beneath my skin
And left me lying there to bleed”
Confirms what I said in the paragraph above. Silly can pick up the pieces of the vase and glue them back together only so many times. After a while, the damage is just too much. No amount of anything will be able to fix Sally soon, and Silly is well aware of this. In spite of all her effort to make things better, she got burned and is now slowly waiting for the only good part of Sally to die off.
“And as you showed me your scars, I only held you closer
But as a light in you went dark, I saw you turning over
I wanted always to be there for you, close to you
But I’m losing this, and I’m losing you”
Obviously Sally didn’t choose to have MPD; she’s been deeply hurt by someone and Silly knows and has seen this. Silly is the part that says “that which does not kill you only makes you stronger”, and she strikes a light in Sally, only it is darkened by the three other personalities who are filled with hate, rage, and sorrow. Again, Silly has tried from day one to fix Sally and bring her to the “light side”, but the others are much too strong and she eventually loses the fight once more.
In the album booklet, the next line of lyrics is in quotations, which leads me to believe that is actually Larry speaking to Sally instead of Silly. It says, “Maybe without me you’ll return to all the beauty I once knew, but if I stay I know we will both be drowned by your holding on to me” (which in the booklet, the lyrics are changed to “Maybe without me you’ll return to all the beauty I once knew, but I can’t stay to see how the sight of me brings madness back to you”).
This is the turning point for Larry. He finally realizes that, in spite of Silly’s attempts to make things better, Sally is just too consumed by the dark. Larry has no other choice then to leave and get out of the relationship.
Thus starts End of Me. “Take away your broken misery; I can’t wait to erase your memory”. This love will be the end of Larry unless he leaves, so that’s exactly what he does. “The sympathy I had is gone”.
The most powerful part in my opinion is when it says, “Your rescue, my undo. I’m not the one to save you. I’m empty, completely. I’m drowning in your shame”. Larry has finally reached the point where he’s just like, “I can’t. No matter how much I love you, I cannot be the one to save you from this”.
At the end of the video it shows Eicca (member of the band, if you don’t know) dropping Sally and she fades away slowly as she falls. And that’s the end of it. He let go, and now Sally is dead (metaphorically at least).
I’d actually love to see a follow up on their characters set in the distant future. Like, I imagine Sally is going to go even farther down this self-destructive path, hopefully Larry will find the light again, and I’m not too sure what will become of Silly. If the story were to have any sort of happy ending, I guess Silly would have to end up winning the battle and then good would have to take over. I don’t know, but it’s a really cool concept, and these videos are amazing.
I hope you enjoyed my interpretation, I know it’s a massie read but it was a complex story to break down. Like I said, I don’t know if any of this is right, but it’s how I received the message…
And for those of you who are curious, here is the Broken Pieces lyrics from the album, since they’re actually different from the other version:
Go here for an enlarged picture.
§Rainbows & Skeletons§
rainbowsandskeletons 
