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For the average sixth-grader, playing video games, watching television and making spitballs usually rank paramount. But the only thing that Malcolm Brickhouse, Alec Atkins and Jarad Dawkins want to do is rock out.
For the past year, this trio — also known as Unlocking the Truth — has been playing New York’s bars and clubs, earning a reputation as one of Brooklyn’s most promising metal bands and blowing away people twice, and even three times, their age.
“My dad used to take me and Jarad to wrestling matches when we were younger,” says 12-year-old Malcolm. (Metal is often played at matches to psych up the crowd between bouts.) “That’s how we were first attracted to metal. We saw that it made people happy and we wanted to do that.” After encountering this unlikely source of inspiration, the pair — Malcolm on guitar and Jarad, now 11, on drums — started using Malcolm’s basement as a practice space. They were still in kindergarten at the time.
Alec, 12, joined the lineup last year on bass. The trio dubbed themselves Unlocking the Truth and decided to get more practice by setting up in the middle of Times Square. Under supervision from Malcolm’s mother, Annette Jackson (who now doubles as the band’s “momager”), they would put in up to 10 hours a day and, on one occasion, net more than $2,000 from passers-by. A short YouTube clip of them playing a fantastically heavy breakdown became a viral hit, registering more than 1.4 million views.
The only thing they’re missing is a vocalist. The boys are reluctant to sing individually, because their voices have yet to break, and tryouts for dedicated singers have proved unsuccessful. But at recent gigs, the three have started to sing in unison.
That they are so young is remarkable — but almost as striking is the fact that they are black: Metal is a genre that has historically been composed of mostly white bands playing to mostly white fans.
Malcolm admits it’s something that makes them stand out. “I think I have three other friends who listen to metal,” says the guitarist, citing Metallica and Linkin Park as major influences. “The rest of them just listen to hip-hop and pop. You see a lot of people trying to be rappers, but there are already a lot of rappers out there. It makes sense for us to do something different.”
Jarad lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Alec is from Crown Heights and Malcolm hails from Flatbush — and all three have families who want the boys’ futures to lie elsewhere.
“Our parents don’t like us to go outside,” says Malcolm. “They want us to get famous with our music so we don’t have to stay in the ghetto and we don’t end up on the streets doing bad things.”
Fame might happen sooner than anyone could have expected. They’ve already clocked up a support slot opening for Slipknot side-project Scar The Martyr, played a hotly anticipated set at Brooklyn’s Afropunk Festival yesterday and are negotiating a record deal. Malcolm admits to dreaming about the fringe benefits of a rock-’n’-roll life.
“I would like to play at Rock Am Ring [a rock festival held in
Germany] because it’s somewhere you can have fun besides playing onstage,” says Malcolm. “I think there are rides there. Like a big Ferris wheel like they have in Coney Island.”
Kids will be kids — even when they’re rising rock stars.