Quote:
The Daily Beast: These days, record labels are more concerned with branding than talent. It’s not a matter of what you can do, it’s a matter of how...Katy Hudson was a gospel recording artist before...(being) transform(ed) into the girl-kissing Katy Perry...Nowhere is this more apparent than in Breaking a Monster, Luke Meyer’s new documentary that chronicles the industry journey of the Brooklyn band Unlocking the Truth...
Back on June 23, 2013, the group staged a raucous gig on the sidewalks of New York City’s Times Square...shredd(ing) through heavy metal tunes like a gang of 30-year-old vets. Video of the performance went very viral, and in July 2014, it was announced that Unlocking the Truth had signed a much-ballyhooed $1.8 million deal with Sony Music Entertainment...
“The guys are such a blank slate,” says Meyer. “They wanted to jump into the world and wanted to be rock stars, but they had no idea what it was going to be about. When people meet the guys, they usually meet them with their idea of who they think they should be—like a Boondocks cartoon, or these cute metalheads. It’s a place where you can see this divide between the guys’ intentions and the label’s intentions.”
...(Their manager) Alan Sacks—an industry vet best known for co-creating the TV series Welcome Back Kotter...rules with an iron fist, banning...guitarist/front man Malcolm Brickhouse...from skateboarding and, in one gripping sequence, taking a coveted bottle of soda and pouring it out in the middle of the street...
And that “lucrative” contract starts affecting the kids in strange ways. In one scene, Malcolm demands to see some evidence of the money, refusing to leave a van until he does. What he doesn’t realize is that the $1.8 million deal is a 360-deal that covers not only five albums, but also a cut of touring, publishing, merchandise, etc...
Malcolm turns to Sacks and asks if the only reason they were signed was because they’re these young, cute black kids who are into heavy metal...They’ve yet to release their debut album, which has been stuck in a bizarre holding pattern with Sony. The boys are desperate to shed the contract, and are in the midst of doing so...Says...(bassist) Alec Atkins, “The album is ready, but...it’s going to be a whole process of getting our music back...”
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You'd think that since the band had to
go to court to sign the contract in the first place because they were so young, their parents would have made
some effort to be a
little extra cautious about what kind of people they were handing over their children to. If they knew anything at all about either the music business OR heavy metal, Sony is the LAST label they would have gone with.
The Times Square gig:
From a September 2014 metal festival gig:
And from a men's store commercial:
Sounds like the documentary maker will be the only one who unlocks any money from Unlocking The Truth. On the other hand, with a bassist named Alec, maybe they were doomed from the start!
03-29-2015, 10:16 PM
Unlocking The Truth (But Who's Watching The Kids?)
