Unlocking the Truth

History

Founding members Malcolm Brickhouse and Jarad Dawkins met each other at a birthday party in 2005. Sharing similar tastes in music, they decided to create a band. As the metal duo’s street performances started gaining attention, Brickhouse and Dawkins felt their band needed a bassist but none of their friends were musicians. So they taught their pre-school friend, Alec Atkins, how to play the bass guitar from scratch. These street performances in Times Square and around New York City led to people recording and uploading videos of them to YouTube, which garnered a lot of attention through social media.

The trio have since appeared on national television, including NBC’s “The Tonight Show”, ABC’s “The View”, CNN, Fuse, BET, Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” and more. In 2014, they were the youngest group to perform at Coachella. They’ve performed at the AFROPUNK FEST, SxSW and were the youngest band to play at the 2014 Vans Warped Tour. They have also performed at the high-profile music festivals Heavy Montreal and Bonnaroo.

The Trio have supported music legends such as Guns N' Roses, Motorhead, Queens of the Stone Age, Living Colour, Marilyn Manson and more while also earning spots in commercials for Airheads, AT&T, Beats by Dr. Dre, Maybelline and Verizon.

The band has been featured in major media outlets like Spin, Revolver, Guitar World, Rolling Stone, New York Daily News, Village Voice, New York Post, New York and Los Angeles Times The Huffington Post, Loudwire and Guitar World, all while attending middle school and now high school.

In 2014 the band signed a $1.8 million contract for five albums with Sony Music Entertainment. Due to the age of the members of the band, the contract had to be approved through the New York Supreme Court. In 2015, the band successfully negotiated their release from the contract with the label.

In April 2016 the band announced the release of their full-length debut album, Chaos. The album was released on June 17, 2016 via TuneCore. A feature-length documentary film about the band, entitled Breaking a Monster, will be released in the Northern Hemisphere summer of 2016. On April 27, Loudwire premiered their first video "Take Control".

Style and influences

Unlocking the Truth’s sound has been described as “a salute to old-school metal that also blends modern influences.” In the Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts wrote of their Coachella performance as "a hard, distorted blend of metal, speed punk and alternative rock on the main stage, they were as well-practiced as units three times their age." Artist Direct says "they are the future of music."

The band has cited influences such as Metallica, Slipknot, Disturbed, Living Colour, Escape the Fate, Chelsea Grin and Motionless in White.

Discography

Members