Teenage Metal Band Unlocks the Truth About the Music Business

(Unlocking the Truth in 2015. Photo: Getty Images)

When Brooklyn African American pre-teen trio Unlocking the Truth – singer and guitarist Malcolm Brickhouse, bassist Alec Atkins, and drummer Jarad Dawkins – started their band in Brooklyn in 2007, they wanted their name to be an expression of human potential and perseverance.

“It means living life and following your dreams,” Brickhouse tells Yahoo Music. “It’s about unlocking the truth of realizing that you can be whatever you want, without anyone telling you that you can’t do it.”

Between 2013 and 2015, however, the band’s moniker took on another meaning. After YouTube videos of Unlocking the Truth playing in Times Square on April 2013 went viral the frenzy began.

Alan Sacks, best known as the producer and co-creator of ‘70s TV comedy Welcome Back, Kotter, offered to manage the boys, and in mid-2014, Unlocking the Truth signed a seemingly lucrative but ultimately loophole-filled record deal with Sony Music. As they were shuttled through the promotional machine of interviews, late-night talk shows, and big league performances, they started to learn some ugly realities about the music industry.

The experiences weren’t all bad. Unlocking the Truth opened for Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, and Marilyn Manson; became the youngest band ever to rock Coachella and the Warped Tour; and met and hung out with the members of Disturbed, the first metal band they ever heard and their greatest influence to date. Unlocking the Truth also had snippets of their music in ads for Airheads, AT&T, Beats by Dr. Dre, Maybelline, and Verizon.

“I really liked all that stuff,” says Brickhouse, who is now 15 years old and getting ready for his sophomore year of high school. “That’s what I live for. I wanted to be noticed for our music, and I was. Everything happened really fast and it was all amazing.”

A few months after the courting, however, the buzz started to wear off, and it became clear that Sony, Sacks, and Unlocking the Truth had competing interests. Sacks wanted to mold a black, heavy metal Hanson. Sony was pushing for a polished group that could be marketed to the mainstream. Unlocking the Truth just wanted to plug in and rip like their favorite metal bands.

“We were frustrated, because things were getting held up and that’s something we didn’t want to happen,” Dawkins says. “When anyone signs a record deal, they want the best things to come from it and they want their music to be released. It was pretty overwhelming that there were delays and we couldn’t do nothin’ about it, because we had a contract with Sony.”

Regarding that contract: The reported $1.8 million deal for five albums was the equivalent of Internet clickbait. The healthy sum total was the amount the band could have earned for all five album advances combined had they sold records like Beyoncé and Drake. And, the deal was tiered. In other words, Unlocking the Truth would have had to sell more than 250,000 of each album to move on to the next level of the advance chain. By March 2015, Unlocking the Truth’s attorneys were negotiating to extricate the band from the label deal.

In the documentary Breaking a Monster, the members of Unlocking the Truth are filmed jumping up and down, ecstatic about the prospect of becoming wealthy. The film, which candidly depicts the young group’s struggle to navigate the rocky waters of the record biz, screened at festivals early last year. It arrives in theaters this month, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign that enabled director Luke Meyer to secure distribution.

With the wisdom of hindsight, Brickhouse says he was fully aware that being on Sony wouldn’t have made him rich; he just wanted to be involved with a corporation that would promote his music to a large audience. “I knew there was a catch, obviously,” he says. “We weren’t getting the money up front. I didn’t even realize the deal was for $1.8 million until the media started reporting that. But we were still learning about the music business, so we didn’t know any better at the time. We were kids.”

Even though they’re still kids, they’ve grown older and wiser – with a little help from parents and lawyers. With producer Johnny K (who worked on Disturbed’s first three records), Unlocking the Truth finally recorded Chaos, which they self-released through Tunecore. The disc, an aggressive blend of radio metalcore, roaring modern American metal, and melodic thrash, pays tribute to the band’s heroes: Disturbed, Slipknot, and Linkin Park. And now that they have an actual release, Unlocking the Truth are trying to schedule a full tour. While promoters aren’t clamoring to book the band the way they did when Unlocking the Truth were immersed in an ocean of hype, the more natural pace is more manageable for the musicians.

“Now that I listen back to what we did the first time we were recording [when we were signed to Sony], it’s not as good as I thought it was at the time,” Brickhouse says. “Compared to Chaos, it’s like night and day. And I think us taking a break from the music industry and having time to practice and get better made the record better.”

When Unlocking the Truth were signed to Sony and started working with Johnny K on their first single, “Monster,” the members’ voices hadn’t changed yet, making it difficult for the producer to gauge the keys in which he should record the songs. Now, everyone’s vocal cords have fully developed, rendering unanticipated voice cracks obsolete.

“I didn’t even realize my voice was changing at the time,” Brickhouse says. “One day I just woke up noticed my voice sounded different than it used to. And when I sang it sounded stronger. And now it’s better than ever.”

Not only are Unlocking the Truth continuing without Sony, they’re no longer working with Sacks. Judging from some of the scenes in Breaking a Monster, like the one in which the manager is yelling at the boys for lacking motivation, or one where he’s trying to prevent Brickhouse from riding his skateboard, maybe Unlocking the Truth are better off without him – not that they’d say as much. Being in the eye of the hurricane has taught the musicians to be succinct and diplomatic.

“Alan is a very good person,” says Dawkins. “He really means well. He loves what he does. He worked with the Jonas Brothers and people like John Travolta. So for him to work with us was a very big honor. I had a good time working with him. I can’t really speak on why we’re not still working together because of confidentiality issues.”

Clearly, Unlocking the Truth want to be rock stars, and, like their heroes, they’ve made some inroads. But, having lost momentum from almost two years away from the spotlight, they still have a ways to go. Neither Jimmy Fallon nor Jimmy Kimmel are banging down their doors. Recently, the only ones that have treated Unlocking the Truth like they’re “special” have been the band members’ schoolteachers.

“That hasn’t really been such a good thing,” Dawkins says. “Our teachers act like we’re rock stars. They think we think that we’re all that, but I don’t think I’m all that. I’m the most calm kid in the classroom. They treat me differently in a bad way, and it kind of sucks.”

“I feel like they’re just mad because they didn’t get the chance in life that we’re getting,” Brickhouse concludes. “Some people get jealous about you and when that happens there’s nothing you can do about it. If they’re mean you just have to ignore them and move on.”