Remember last year when African American teenagers Unlocking the Truth signed a deal with Sony said to be worth up to $1.8 million? We had our doubts that they’d ever see all that money, given the unlikely amount of records they’d have to sell. Now it turns out that even before they’ve released one note of music, they’re looking to get out of their deal.
After a screening of their film, Breaking a Monster at SXSW, which again, is out before they’ve released any music, the band announced they were looking to leave, Billboard reports:
“Our attorneys are working on our exit from Sony now,” guitarist, songwriter and singer Malcolm Brickhouse said at the March 14 world premiere of Breaking a Monster, a documentary on how the band rose from playing the sidewalks of Times Square to the main stage of Coachella and Vans Warped Tour.
Manager Alan Sacks admitted they’re looking to leave Sony, but didn’t offer any more details. The band’s EP had been set to come out on Artery. In the film, which has yet to find a distributor, the band are shown recording the song “Monster,” which they played on the Colbert Report. The film ends with them shooting a video for the song. While the band might be looking to leave their deal before any music comes out, they’re still going to be playing festivals like Bonnaroo and Rock on the Range.
It’ll be intriguing to see how this plays out. Their long-in-the-works EP would have had to sell more than 250,000 copies for them to make any more than the $60,000 advance that they’d gotten, which while not impossible, is unrealistic. The fact that there still isn’t any music out, but there is a film complete suggests that it might be taking them longer to write music than Sony would like. Ultimately, while the hype about the band’s young age and their subsequent signing made for a good story last year, things are a little more complex.
