Toronto’s No Breaks Jake returns with “I Don’t Want to Be Like Me,” a volatile, slow-burning alt-rock track that grapples with identity, guilt, and the longing for self-reinvention. It’s a heavy, emotional unraveling – one that begins in quiet vulnerability and erupts into a wall of fuzzed-out guitar riffs, cathartic screams, and sky-is-falling chaos.

The single marks a thematic cornerstone of No Breaks Jake‘s upcoming Amygdalan EP, setting the tone for a project that doesn’t shy away from the harder truths. “This song evokes a state of mind that, honestly, I’m trying to leave behind,” says bandleader Jacob Kassay. “Actually doing that is definitely a little harder.”

Written and self-produced in Toronto, the song evolved through a dozen different iterations and multiple structural overhauls before landing in its final form. “It was all about telling the story effectively,” says Kassay. “I love how it builds from something intimate and restrained into a screaming mess. There’s something satisfying about watching it all fall apart.”

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically in this way?

The first lyrics written were the first you hear: Bitter / I wanted to be like you / Tell me honestly, honestly / Why I feel the way I do. Right away, I knew I was writing about some of the ugliest, most unlikeable traits I have as a person – toxic, jealous, empty feelings. I think we can all relate to having those thoughts, and wanting to outgrow them – but it’s never easy, and it tends to take quite a long time. It’s always two steps forward and one step back. This song is about carrying those expectations, shaking under the weight, until finally everything gives out and you break entirely. That’s okay too, remember – two steps forward, one step back. We can keep moving forward after we recover. Right now we need to stumble.

Most of my favourite art could probably be pigeonholed in this category of having these heavy, depressing themes that deal with the darker side of life, but I think that’s where the beauty is. Life can be scary and impossible and chaotic. Art is about having the courage to confront it anyways. All I want to do is create with integrity in this fashion. This video is my attempt at trying to capture that integrity.

2. What was the inspiration behind this new video (visuals, storyline, etc.)?

The song being what it is, I was fascinated with this general idea of ‘looking at yourself’. Early on, I landed on the visual of the broken mask, this perfect facade that had cracked and something ugly was seeping through. The decision to make it eyeless was one of those happy accidents; earlier sketches looked more like a typical china doll, with big doe-eyes, eyelashes, and lips, but I wasn’t great at drawing it and simplified the design. What I ended up with really struck me because suddenly there was this connotation of self-inflicted blindness. It’s the mask we all wear, the one that hides everything about ourselves we can’t see – or don’t want to. And apparently, in this haunted art gallery, it comes to life, sprouts an eldritch body, and tries to kill you. How fun.

It was important to me that the storyline of the video wasn’t too oppressive or hopeless. I wanted our hero’s journey to reflect my own feelings about the song: things aren’t looking great, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them better. We’re not giving up. So I had him fight back, outmatched though he was. Things end a little ambiguously, too; it’s unclear who won the fight, or if either of them might get back up. But I like to think that the point of my little tale isn’t how it ends; it’s that he chose to take up arms in the first place.

3. What was the process of making the video?

First, I just gave myself a premise. What would be interesting to draw, interesting to see? More importantly, what gets across the message of the song? And once I had that premise, that haunted, monstrous, mask… thing, I could map out key visuals that fit the biggest moments in the song.

I’m generally not such a ‘storyteller’ songwriter. I don’t want to keep track of characters or plot points or chronology; I like songs that embody an emotion, a thought, a feeling, and then hit you as hard as they can with it. Fittingly, the video plays out less like a story and more like a dream: scattered, fleeting images strung together, carrying you from one idea to the next. I had several sort of ‘big moments’ in my head: the unearthly presence of the mask, the monster that grows from it, the haunting, judgmental stares of the painting it emerged from, or especially that shot near the end of the monster in its largest form, coiled like a dragon around this terrified but unflinching hero. From there it was about connecting the dots, like trying to unravel what must have happened to end up in this place.