Trueblood °1824 Press Conference
Written by Niall Mirza
Stepping out of the garage, viral alt-rock band Trueblood has finally shared their debut EP, First Impressions. The title feels fittingly ironic for a band that amassed over a billion views in under a year, while much of their audience still knew them primarily through covers. As the band of four brothers explained, the five-track project offers an opportunity to introduce a side of themselves that goes beyond their well-known covers on social media, bottling their energetic sound and genuine chemistry. As drummer Cameron puts it, the project is the perfect way to let their fans know: “Hi, we also do this other thing. We make our own music”.
Though they’re still so young, with ages ranging from thirteen to nineteen, the Trueblood brothers have been playing music since they were kids, long before they found an audience on TikTok in 2024. The youngest, Ethan, even recalls jamming with his brothers at only four or five years old. When you look at the band in a vacuum, seeing them on-stage opening for the All-American Rejects, or catching one of eight sold-out shows on their West Coast headliner, that’s something you might just miss. But digging into their story, you unlock an overnight success that’s been years in the making: their approach to music formed a sound that had been waiting for an audience, not the other way around.
Yet, despite their years of playing together, the brothers struggle to pin down exactly what makes a Trueblood song sound like Trueblood. They were raised on classic rock that their parents played, like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, before discovering 90s/00s greats like Nirvana and Radiohead. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they noticed their individual tastes branching out and taking shape, but they’ll always have that “shared base of all that music [they] grew up listening to”. So, rather than borrowing from any one influence, Trueblood's sound seems to be the culmination of a lifetime spent listening, learning, and playing together. When they disagree, as all brothers do, and when they fight (usually over food), they all come back to a shared goal: to pursue a sound that refuses definition, constantly shapeshifting with their individual tastes.
The band stays on the same page because they’ve shared this central experience with each other: their lives have changed very rapidly in a way none of them could have ever expected. Listening to the EP, I charted themes of nostalgia on almost every track. I was honestly surprised to find out this wasn’t at all consciously planned out by Mason, who tackles most of the songwriting. He was simply trying to put into words what the brothers were all feeling, as a collective, drawing on their indescribable twin-like telepathy. So, while musically Trueblood draws from their shared past, lyrically, it feels as though they're processing the experience of leaving parts of that past behind to chase their dreams.
This collective identity carries into the band's creative process, where all four brothers must unanimously approve anything they release. The only formula for a Trueblood song? Whether all four of them truly believe in it.
For the band, the leap from garage covers to sold-out stages and bigger platforms hasn’t fundamentally changed their approach to performing. Their recent music video for ‘Make It Out’ sees them performing on a rooftop, bridging the familiar intimacy of their older TikTok videos with the messages of their original music. Whether they’re playing covers (at one point the band described themselves as practically a Foo Fighters tribute band) or originals, their goal remains the same: to put on a damn good rock show. With First Impressions, the brothers aren't reinventing themselves for their newfound audience. Instead, they're finally giving the world a chance to discover the band they've been all along.
