Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Almost all stories about kids in show business are cautionary tales. While Breaking A Monster, the feature length profile of teen metal band Unlocking The Truth, thankfully doesn’t feature the full crash and burn we know can happen, it still shows how the entertainment industry often operates with little concern for its “artists,” especially those already at a disadvantage due to their age. The 2015 film was directed by Luke Meyer, known for his documentaries Darkon and New World Order, and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Unlocking The Truth became a viral sensation in 2013, after one of their street performances was posted to YouTube and rapidly garnered millions of views. The band were considered an anomaly; three middle school aged African-American kids from Brooklyn, playing crushing modern metal, in the vein of their heroes Metallica, Slipknot and Disturbed. From the start though, the band has had to grapple with people’s preconceived generalizations and stereotypes. The idea of black kids playing heavy metal is only unique if you know nothing about heavy metal, about the immense contributions of non-white metal musicians and the genre’s global popularity, which encompasses people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds.
The band is made up of guitarist and reluctant lead singer Malcom Brickhouse, drummer Jarad Dawkins, and bassist Alec Atkins, all born in 2001. Unlocking The Truth were encouraged by Brickhouse’s (at times domineering) mother, who saw it as a way to keep them off the street and occupied when she was away at work. The documentary started as a short, which was then expanded into a feature once the band hooked up with manager Alan Sacks.
Sacks, whose background is in film and television for the most part, unfortunately evokes every “shady-industry-hack” stereotype you can think of. While his enthusiasm and affection for the band appear genuine, the septuagenarian manager seems clueless about what the band is trying to do and what they need as people. At times he almost seems like an overbearing stage parent, his appearance getting flashier, the further the band travels down the road to their expectant stardom.
To Sacks’ credit, he secures the band a lucrative 5-album deal with Sony Music, worth $1.8 million dollars. Anyone with a basic knowledge of how recording contracts work knows this doesn’t mean the band will ever see anywhere near that amount of money, but hey, it looks good on paper. This sends the boys, who don’t seem to have been much further from their homes in Flatbush than Times Square, deep into the heart of the glad-handing Los Angeles music industry.
It’s amazing and, at times, cringe-inducing to watch the group in the middle of meetings with the Sony brass. While discussing contractual obligations and marketing plans, they react they way you’d expect a bunch of 13-year-old boys to react; they’re bored out of their skulls. They fidget, they check their phones, they twiddle their thumbs. It’s tragic that no one in the room can see what’s so obvious to anyone viewing the movie; that the boys are out of their league and not quite ready for prime time.
It’s also apparent, that while the young metal band wants “to be taken seriously,” in Malcolm’s words, the label sees them as a novelty, with whom to make a quick buck. The natural barriers of race and class are only exacerbated by the band’s youth, as you watch them endure one condescending meeting after another with some shlubby, middle-aged, white company man who has no idea what the band is about or what they want to do.
While Unlocking The Truth’s musical accomplishments are impressive for their age, they still have all the shortcomings one would expect from a band in their early teens. Their songwriting lacks depth, both in quality and quantity, and when they open their mouths to sing, they sound like little kids. Not the best thing for an aspiring metal band. These weaknesses become ever more apparent, as the group rides its publicity into a slew of festival appearances. Though, they’re received rapturously, as you see people line up to take selfless with them, you can’t thinking its partly due to the dreaded novelty factor. Ironically, they’re interviewed at one point by A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, who penned the prescient line “Industry rule #4080 / record company people are shady.”
While Breaking A Monster doesn’t cover Unlocking The Truth’s eventual split with both Sacks and Sony Music, the writing’s on the wall. Sacks, who says at one point “These kids could be my grandkids. I look at it in that way,” is an industry insider, but a crappy manager for a teenage metal band. He treats them like petulant kids, when he should be showing them how they can grow into manhood. There’s a great moment when Malcom Brickhouse tells his mother “I’m too young for responsibility. I’m not a man yet.” To her credit, she knows the dangers of burn out, saying “I don’t want the band to be a job.”
Watching Breaking A Monster, I wanted to jump through the screen and tell everyone to leave the band alone. Let them be kids. It’s OK if they break an arm skateboarding. You know why? Because they’re kids and they should be allowed to have some fun. And with the experiences of broken limbs, and broken hearts, and broken dreams, maybe they’ll have something of substance to write about. Heavy metal is not served well by overnight sensations. You need to pay your dues, which Unlocking The Truth are well on their way to doing. And who knows, maybe one day they’ll become that truly great heavy metal band they want to be. I’m rooting for them.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who has a signed portrait of Daniel O’Connell in his house (look him up). Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
