The setting is that of an audience coming to see a puppet-show. This skit/song then goes through a historical timeline: from the primitive ages, moving into medieval times, and then to the World Wars. The skit reveals the brokenness of the world we live in, and how there has been times where there was hope for change (like after WWI), but that hope was short-lived and futile. We find ourselves WATCHING the audience, and appalled by their reaction to the brokenness. They are thoroughly entertained by history and have no intention to learn from its mistakes and downfalls.
At the end of the timeline however, we find the audience now on the stage. The audience's ignorance (or even apathy) towards history only meant that they are now the next "symbol of brokenness" in the timeline. And now, we are WATCHING them. We are the NEW audience, watching the OLD audience on the stage, and the poignant question to us is whether we'd be the next ones on stage for a new audience to scorn.
Quickly, the second plot twist is revealed: that the audience ended up on the stage because of the hands of a few higher-ups. Our fate, it seems, rests ultimately in the hands of a greater government, and we are told to wake up before we find ourselves bending the knee to a government that would REALLY end us up on the stage for a future audience.
@anonymousity Hey I find your interpretation very similar to mine, with one exeption. I think the stage itself is a symbol for mass manipulation (like the central theme of the song Goddamn in the same album). If we look at the lyrics ''Who is the crowd that peers through the cage, as we perform here upon the stage'' and even ''you do know this is just a simulation, don't you?'', I think that the stage here represents the place for a social show, the crowd peering through the cage being like you said an allmighty government, pulling the strings of...
@anonymousity Hey I find your interpretation very similar to mine, with one exeption. I think the stage itself is a symbol for mass manipulation (like the central theme of the song Goddamn in the same album). If we look at the lyrics ''Who is the crowd that peers through the cage, as we perform here upon the stage'' and even ''you do know this is just a simulation, don't you?'', I think that the stage here represents the place for a social show, the crowd peering through the cage being like you said an allmighty government, pulling the strings of the puppets the masses are made to be, and making the masses (us) ''perform'' all this social bullshit that is ironically, as ''the fantastical history of the world'' show lets us see (name from music video) our human history. So the idea of a stage is to me such an amazing perceptive use of literary imagery to portray this idea of manipulation, while at the same time criticizing our society with all the bluntness Avenged Sevenfold is awesome for having. I also have a hypothesis which I am not sure of but here goes : the narrator of the song might be Satan ? I think this might be valid from a certain point of view, for example with ''so I arrived, naked and cold'', which COULD symbolize Satan arriving on earth, and could explain why the narrator talks about the human race with direct association with it.
The setting is that of an audience coming to see a puppet-show. This skit/song then goes through a historical timeline: from the primitive ages, moving into medieval times, and then to the World Wars. The skit reveals the brokenness of the world we live in, and how there has been times where there was hope for change (like after WWI), but that hope was short-lived and futile. We find ourselves WATCHING the audience, and appalled by their reaction to the brokenness. They are thoroughly entertained by history and have no intention to learn from its mistakes and downfalls.
At the end of the timeline however, we find the audience now on the stage. The audience's ignorance (or even apathy) towards history only meant that they are now the next "symbol of brokenness" in the timeline. And now, we are WATCHING them. We are the NEW audience, watching the OLD audience on the stage, and the poignant question to us is whether we'd be the next ones on stage for a new audience to scorn.
Quickly, the second plot twist is revealed: that the audience ended up on the stage because of the hands of a few higher-ups. Our fate, it seems, rests ultimately in the hands of a greater government, and we are told to wake up before we find ourselves bending the knee to a government that would REALLY end us up on the stage for a future audience.
A very apt song for a very present reality.
@anonymousity Hey I find your interpretation very similar to mine, with one exeption. I think the stage itself is a symbol for mass manipulation (like the central theme of the song Goddamn in the same album). If we look at the lyrics ''Who is the crowd that peers through the cage, as we perform here upon the stage'' and even ''you do know this is just a simulation, don't you?'', I think that the stage here represents the place for a social show, the crowd peering through the cage being like you said an allmighty government, pulling the strings of...
@anonymousity Hey I find your interpretation very similar to mine, with one exeption. I think the stage itself is a symbol for mass manipulation (like the central theme of the song Goddamn in the same album). If we look at the lyrics ''Who is the crowd that peers through the cage, as we perform here upon the stage'' and even ''you do know this is just a simulation, don't you?'', I think that the stage here represents the place for a social show, the crowd peering through the cage being like you said an allmighty government, pulling the strings of the puppets the masses are made to be, and making the masses (us) ''perform'' all this social bullshit that is ironically, as ''the fantastical history of the world'' show lets us see (name from music video) our human history. So the idea of a stage is to me such an amazing perceptive use of literary imagery to portray this idea of manipulation, while at the same time criticizing our society with all the bluntness Avenged Sevenfold is awesome for having. I also have a hypothesis which I am not sure of but here goes : the narrator of the song might be Satan ? I think this might be valid from a certain point of view, for example with ''so I arrived, naked and cold'', which COULD symbolize Satan arriving on earth, and could explain why the narrator talks about the human race with direct association with it.
my apologies, my last sentence doesn't make sense : i meant WITHOUT direct association with it
my apologies, my last sentence doesn't make sense : i meant WITHOUT direct association with it