Sumo Cyco may just be the hardest working band on the planet right now. Totally independent, the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada based punk / dancehall crossover squad do pretty much everything themselves from writing, recording and producing music in their home studio to directing (and obviously starring in) their music videos. The band are also frequent visitors to UK shores so when I was offered the opportunity to sit down with vocalist and one of the two main creative forces behind the band Skye “Sever” Sweetnam (the other force being guitarist Matt “MD13” Drake) for a chat prior to their recent show on board Bristol’s Thekla (as the main support to headliners CKY along with opening act Bullets And Octane) being the fanboy I am, I accepted.
Having met Skye in the car park outside the venue we proceeded to the bands camper and, seeing as though this was the last night of this tour and the bands final show of the year I started by asking how the tour had gone to that point:
(Skye) “It’s been fun, it’s been a roller-coaster. We’ve had some amazing, great shows – unexpected shows such as a high school and we also unfortunately had a break in to our camper so there’s ups and there’s downs. We’re all sorted now and everything’s worked out but for a few days there was a little bit of pandemonium not knowing whether or not we were gonna be even able to finish the rest of the tour so I’m so glad we didn’t even miss one show and everything went on as planned.”
(For those that don’t know the aforementioned camper break in saw the band’s passports being stolen amongst other things (but thankfully none of their gear or merch money). As the break in happened in Ireland the band weren’t even sure for a while whether they would be able to travel to England without passports, but after they were able to make the journey they had to make a six hour drive from Glasgow to London to get new passports on their only day off. After getting new passports though the band travelled to Milton Keynes to hang out (and perform, in Skye’s case as mentioned a little later) with Skindred for the night, so as Skye says there’s ups and there’s downs).
Having established that Skye had never done a show on a boat before (the night’s venue – Thekla – is a boat moored in Bristol’s mud docks if you didn’t already know), I asked about the other unusual venue they performed in on this tour, that being the aforementioned high school:
(Skye) “So we happen to have a really amazing crazy fan from Germany named Lars who is an English teacher in a high school. When he got our schedule for this tour he said “you know you’re passing right by where my high school is, maybe you could come in and talk to the kids?”, and we said “talk to them? Why would we talk to them when we could play a rock show for them?” so then we, especially my guitarist Matt is like “OK we’re not gonna do this on a little scale we’re gonna do this on a big scale - we’re gonna do it for the whole school, what time can we do it when the entire school is gonna be able to watch?” so at like 9:15 in the morning or something we played a set and we had a bunch of high-schoolers rocking out and moshing! We didn’t know what to expect because it’s a common hour where they can do whatever they need to like extra homework, go to the cafeteria or whatever so they didn’t have to sit there and watch, they could have done other things. Lars was a little bit unsure if everyone was gonna dig the rock music but I told him “this is going to be so much fun” and it was. It was a great experience for us as well because they surprised us with their choir and their guitar players learning a song of ours and performing it for us.” (Neil’s note: the song in question was Free Yourself, more on that in a bit).
Moving on to our shared interest in Welsh Ragga metallers Skindred I asked how the collaboration with Benji Webbe on the track Move Mountains (from Sumo’s latest album Opus Mar) came about:
On the subject of new music, I then asked about the EP that was originally planned for release this year which ended up being shelved:
(Skye) “We were anticipating to do that but then we ended up hooking up with a new management company; you may know DevilDriver and Coal Chamber lead singer Dez Fafara? Over the last year he just started a management company called Oracle Management with his wife and they have the likes of Jinjer and Cradle Of Filth and some amazing artists on the roster (Neil’s note: also Combichrist, Wednesday 13, Static-X and producer Ross Robinson to add a few others), so he started working with us and we kinda decided that instead of putting out a quick EP with some stuff that we’d written that we’d take an extra amount of time over the summer after our tours and really try to do a lot of really deep songwriting and venturing into all the different kinds of things that we can do as songwriters and come up with a super strong album for 2019.
Having met Skye in the car park outside the venue we proceeded to the bands camper and, seeing as though this was the last night of this tour and the bands final show of the year I started by asking how the tour had gone to that point:
(Skye) “It’s been fun, it’s been a roller-coaster. We’ve had some amazing, great shows – unexpected shows such as a high school and we also unfortunately had a break in to our camper so there’s ups and there’s downs. We’re all sorted now and everything’s worked out but for a few days there was a little bit of pandemonium not knowing whether or not we were gonna be even able to finish the rest of the tour so I’m so glad we didn’t even miss one show and everything went on as planned.”
(For those that don’t know the aforementioned camper break in saw the band’s passports being stolen amongst other things (but thankfully none of their gear or merch money). As the break in happened in Ireland the band weren’t even sure for a while whether they would be able to travel to England without passports, but after they were able to make the journey they had to make a six hour drive from Glasgow to London to get new passports on their only day off. After getting new passports though the band travelled to Milton Keynes to hang out (and perform, in Skye’s case as mentioned a little later) with Skindred for the night, so as Skye says there’s ups and there’s downs).
Having established that Skye had never done a show on a boat before (the night’s venue – Thekla – is a boat moored in Bristol’s mud docks if you didn’t already know), I asked about the other unusual venue they performed in on this tour, that being the aforementioned high school:
(Skye) “So we happen to have a really amazing crazy fan from Germany named Lars who is an English teacher in a high school. When he got our schedule for this tour he said “you know you’re passing right by where my high school is, maybe you could come in and talk to the kids?”, and we said “talk to them? Why would we talk to them when we could play a rock show for them?” so then we, especially my guitarist Matt is like “OK we’re not gonna do this on a little scale we’re gonna do this on a big scale - we’re gonna do it for the whole school, what time can we do it when the entire school is gonna be able to watch?” so at like 9:15 in the morning or something we played a set and we had a bunch of high-schoolers rocking out and moshing! We didn’t know what to expect because it’s a common hour where they can do whatever they need to like extra homework, go to the cafeteria or whatever so they didn’t have to sit there and watch, they could have done other things. Lars was a little bit unsure if everyone was gonna dig the rock music but I told him “this is going to be so much fun” and it was. It was a great experience for us as well because they surprised us with their choir and their guitar players learning a song of ours and performing it for us.” (Neil’s note: the song in question was Free Yourself, more on that in a bit).
Moving on to our shared interest in Welsh Ragga metallers Skindred I asked how the collaboration with Benji Webbe on the track Move Mountains (from Sumo’s latest album Opus Mar) came about:
(Skye) “I told everybody that I knew that I loved Benji and that I’d love for him to be on the song and it is a small world in the industry and we had contacted Skindred’s management, we were working with the same producer that worked on their last few records, we have the same PR agent etc so I think word just got around that we needed this to happen. Once we sent him the song it just all came together. I didn’t actually meet him until we did the video for it in Newport, in the Dub War rehearsal studios. Benji was just a total gentleman and took us out to show us Newport. It was a lot of fun and I was kind of in shock because you look up to a band for so long and Skindred was one of the reasons we started playing this type of music and they say not to meet your idols because you’ll be let down but Benji did not let me down; it was one of my favourite days I’ve ever had – filming a music video and going out on the town with Benji was a great day.”
Speaking of Skindred, Sumo Cyco was supposed to be their support on a US tour that was originally arranged for this past summer but was cancelled at the last minute due to visa issues. I asked Skye whether this tour might be rearranged in the future:
(Skye) “I’m not sure what’s gonna happen with that, obviously there was some type of issue with immigration and getting the visa’s over to America, but the boys and I are still great friends. I actually stopped over in Milton Keynes during a show they were playing on this tour a couple of weeks ago and got on stage and did Warning with them, and the Newport Helicopter of course. So there’s been moments that we’ve been able to collaborate, there will be at some point a tour I’m sure eventually down the line, it just hasn’t worked out yet.”
Speaking of Skindred, Sumo Cyco was supposed to be their support on a US tour that was originally arranged for this past summer but was cancelled at the last minute due to visa issues. I asked Skye whether this tour might be rearranged in the future:
(Skye) “I’m not sure what’s gonna happen with that, obviously there was some type of issue with immigration and getting the visa’s over to America, but the boys and I are still great friends. I actually stopped over in Milton Keynes during a show they were playing on this tour a couple of weeks ago and got on stage and did Warning with them, and the Newport Helicopter of course. So there’s been moments that we’ve been able to collaborate, there will be at some point a tour I’m sure eventually down the line, it just hasn’t worked out yet.”
Me (in response): “I’d like to see a UK tour with the two of you”
Skye (decisively) “Yes”.
Having just released their second EP of Sumo Cyco songs reworked acoustically (Appropriately titled Live Acoustic Sessions Vol. 2) I then asked what the thought process was behind going down the stripped back route:
(Skye) “The first reason we started doing acoustic was because my arm was kinda twisted by a friend back home in Toronto to do a singer songwriter night. At singer songwriter nights it’s very inspired by Nashville you kind of always tell a story of why you wrote the song, what inspired the song and then you perform the song and it’s a very intimate and kind of close setting. [That] wasn’t gonna work for the full band so I convinced Matt my guitarist in Sumo Cyco to rearrange some Sumo Cyco songs for that night and then once we took the time to do that we said “Well we gotta record this in some way because we’re just being selfish just keeping it to ourselves”, so we released the acoustic volume 1 EP. That went off so well that on our UK headlining tour that we did earlier this year we did acoustic VIP packages where the fans could come early and they could experience the acoustic versions of a few songs and then hang out with us for a bit before the live show started.
Having just released their second EP of Sumo Cyco songs reworked acoustically (Appropriately titled Live Acoustic Sessions Vol. 2) I then asked what the thought process was behind going down the stripped back route:
(Skye) “The first reason we started doing acoustic was because my arm was kinda twisted by a friend back home in Toronto to do a singer songwriter night. At singer songwriter nights it’s very inspired by Nashville you kind of always tell a story of why you wrote the song, what inspired the song and then you perform the song and it’s a very intimate and kind of close setting. [That] wasn’t gonna work for the full band so I convinced Matt my guitarist in Sumo Cyco to rearrange some Sumo Cyco songs for that night and then once we took the time to do that we said “Well we gotta record this in some way because we’re just being selfish just keeping it to ourselves”, so we released the acoustic volume 1 EP. That went off so well that on our UK headlining tour that we did earlier this year we did acoustic VIP packages where the fans could come early and they could experience the acoustic versions of a few songs and then hang out with us for a bit before the live show started.
(Skye) That went off really well so there just was a demand for it and I think especially after hearing these kids at this high school singing a song acoustically (Neil’s note: the aforementioned Free Yourself) I almost didn’t believe it was my own song because they do have such a vastly different feel when you just break it down to melody and lyrics and guitar. Obviously I’m in this band because I love the pandemonium and chaos - but there is a lot of meaning that sometimes can be lost in the mayhem, and so I think that doing it that way shows a very different side that I think a lot of people may like that may not even like our crazy rock stuff so it’s just kind of appealing to everybody out there in all different ways. As an independent band we’ve gotta hustle and always put stuff out because people have short attention spans so for me it was a good sort of tide over until new music starts coming our for our next album next year, so it’s kinda cool to be bringing some of the old songs back and doing them this way.”
On the subject of new music, I then asked about the EP that was originally planned for release this year which ended up being shelved:
(Skye) “We were anticipating to do that but then we ended up hooking up with a new management company; you may know DevilDriver and Coal Chamber lead singer Dez Fafara? Over the last year he just started a management company called Oracle Management with his wife and they have the likes of Jinjer and Cradle Of Filth and some amazing artists on the roster (Neil’s note: also Combichrist, Wednesday 13, Static-X and producer Ross Robinson to add a few others), so he started working with us and we kinda decided that instead of putting out a quick EP with some stuff that we’d written that we’d take an extra amount of time over the summer after our tours and really try to do a lot of really deep songwriting and venturing into all the different kinds of things that we can do as songwriters and come up with a super strong album for 2019.
(Skye) Dez kinda pushed us - in a good way - pushed our songwriting skills to say “I think you could write a song that would fit this way, could you go this way, could you try this?” and Matt and I have sometimes just been like “oh we’ll just do whatever” and it just comes out the way it comes out, but I think when you have a challenge or when someone's like “I think you need to write a song that’s more in this direction or that direction” it almost makes you get more creative because you have to work within those restraints and come up with something really amazing. So we’ve really been spending a lot of time, more than ever with every passing year as Matt and I become a better writing team together the songs I think just keep getting better. He [Matt] keeps becoming a better engineer, producer - we do this all out of our home studio so I like to think that the next record is going to be the best yet.”
Over the years the band have released a number of digital singles and videos to coincide with and promote tours in particular (such as Sirens to coincide with their first UK tour in 2013 and Undefeated to mark their first headlining UK tour earlier this year). From a standpoint of pure self interest I enquired about the possibility of compiling all these older singles onto one album so fans (i.e. me) can get them all in one place:
(Skye) “That’s interesting; there’s a few projects that have come across like maybe we should do anniversary versions, people have asked about getting vinyl printed of some of the earlier records and so I think there’s that and then there’s a compilation of all the videos on a DVD with some behind the scenes stuff that we never released. There’s also finishing the story line because all our videos have these crazy storylines that I haven’t quite wrapped up yet so maybe we could release a finale movie. There’s so many ideas but I think that definitely we’re not against doing stuff like that, maybe coming out with an anniversary compilation CD like you said with all the earlier releases maybe in the future, it’s not a bad idea.”
Over the years the band have released a number of digital singles and videos to coincide with and promote tours in particular (such as Sirens to coincide with their first UK tour in 2013 and Undefeated to mark their first headlining UK tour earlier this year). From a standpoint of pure self interest I enquired about the possibility of compiling all these older singles onto one album so fans (i.e. me) can get them all in one place:
(Skye) “That’s interesting; there’s a few projects that have come across like maybe we should do anniversary versions, people have asked about getting vinyl printed of some of the earlier records and so I think there’s that and then there’s a compilation of all the videos on a DVD with some behind the scenes stuff that we never released. There’s also finishing the story line because all our videos have these crazy storylines that I haven’t quite wrapped up yet so maybe we could release a finale movie. There’s so many ideas but I think that definitely we’re not against doing stuff like that, maybe coming out with an anniversary compilation CD like you said with all the earlier releases maybe in the future, it’s not a bad idea.”
So if such a compilation ever actually happens you are welcome to thank me ;)
Returning to the topic of tours, the band have now done a total of eight UK tours in the past five years (which is a phenomenal workrate if you ask me), so how important does Skye think that the UK is as an area / market for Sumo Cyco?
(Skye) “I would think it’s the number one priority actually as far as areas go right now. We’ve been fortunate enough to get some really great opportunities here and I think it has helped us in all other areas of our career. America is our next door neighbour and it’s really important but it’s also an even bigger place obviously than the UK to get around. I think that’s what we love about coming here is that the drives from one place to another aren’t really that bad. There’s a lot of people in a tiny amount of space so you can hit a lot of people in a short amount of time. Having the consistency of coming back every six months or so I think has really helped our fan base ‘cause you build off of the momentum, but we also understand that you can’t oversaturate either so every time you come back you have to make sure you have something special to share with the people like a new song or a new album. Shows like what we’re doing with CKY have been great for us because we’re exposing ourselves to new fans, new potential people who’ve never heard about us before and that’s what to me is the most rewarding part of when you do these opening gigs is to see the reaction of people in the crowd who are kind of unsure at the beginning and they start getting into it by the end.”
Speaking of getting in front of new people, you don’t seem to play all that many festivals, is that because it’s difficult as an independent band to get on those sorts of bills?
(Skye) “That’s a kind of a goal to go for all the festivals next year. Fingers crossed everything works out but like I said we’ve tried to build enough momentum, especially here, to finally get some of that recognition and you’re right it is more difficult as an independent band to get those slots ‘cause they do fill up so fast and the labels kinda have first dibs on the spots so it makes it harder and harder for us as the little guys busting our way in. Luckily we’ve had great support from the likes of Live Nation who’ve seen our numbers and stuff, that shows that there is great support for our band here and we’re really lucky to have that so hopefully that’ll shine through and we’ll be able to get in front of even more people with some of the festivals and stuff. That’d be great, a great experience ‘cause I’ve never done that over here either so I would be so up to be a part of it.”
So, is there any chance of a record deal in the near future, or do you think that would impinge too much on your creative process? You do pretty much everything yourselves right now, is that because you prefer it that way?
(Skye) “I have had experience with a major label in the past (Neil’s note: Skye was signed as a solo artist to EMI / Capitol Records in 2003 where she released two studio albums before forming Sumo Cyco with Matt in 2011), but it is a different climate right now than it was ten years ago when I was working with labels, and it’s different labels I’d be working with in this genre versus before. There’s positive and negative memories of that experience and I’m never against talking with people and seeing their perspective and what they think they can do to help us and what we can do to help them in a kinda business arrangement, but you’re right I do have a very controlling... - or just a really passionate opinion about what our music should sound like, what our videos look like, what our style is, how we do our live show, and I’m not against suggestions as long as I agree with them (laughs)!
Returning to the topic of tours, the band have now done a total of eight UK tours in the past five years (which is a phenomenal workrate if you ask me), so how important does Skye think that the UK is as an area / market for Sumo Cyco?
(Skye) “I would think it’s the number one priority actually as far as areas go right now. We’ve been fortunate enough to get some really great opportunities here and I think it has helped us in all other areas of our career. America is our next door neighbour and it’s really important but it’s also an even bigger place obviously than the UK to get around. I think that’s what we love about coming here is that the drives from one place to another aren’t really that bad. There’s a lot of people in a tiny amount of space so you can hit a lot of people in a short amount of time. Having the consistency of coming back every six months or so I think has really helped our fan base ‘cause you build off of the momentum, but we also understand that you can’t oversaturate either so every time you come back you have to make sure you have something special to share with the people like a new song or a new album. Shows like what we’re doing with CKY have been great for us because we’re exposing ourselves to new fans, new potential people who’ve never heard about us before and that’s what to me is the most rewarding part of when you do these opening gigs is to see the reaction of people in the crowd who are kind of unsure at the beginning and they start getting into it by the end.”
Speaking of getting in front of new people, you don’t seem to play all that many festivals, is that because it’s difficult as an independent band to get on those sorts of bills?
(Skye) “That’s a kind of a goal to go for all the festivals next year. Fingers crossed everything works out but like I said we’ve tried to build enough momentum, especially here, to finally get some of that recognition and you’re right it is more difficult as an independent band to get those slots ‘cause they do fill up so fast and the labels kinda have first dibs on the spots so it makes it harder and harder for us as the little guys busting our way in. Luckily we’ve had great support from the likes of Live Nation who’ve seen our numbers and stuff, that shows that there is great support for our band here and we’re really lucky to have that so hopefully that’ll shine through and we’ll be able to get in front of even more people with some of the festivals and stuff. That’d be great, a great experience ‘cause I’ve never done that over here either so I would be so up to be a part of it.”
So, is there any chance of a record deal in the near future, or do you think that would impinge too much on your creative process? You do pretty much everything yourselves right now, is that because you prefer it that way?
(Skye) “I have had experience with a major label in the past (Neil’s note: Skye was signed as a solo artist to EMI / Capitol Records in 2003 where she released two studio albums before forming Sumo Cyco with Matt in 2011), but it is a different climate right now than it was ten years ago when I was working with labels, and it’s different labels I’d be working with in this genre versus before. There’s positive and negative memories of that experience and I’m never against talking with people and seeing their perspective and what they think they can do to help us and what we can do to help them in a kinda business arrangement, but you’re right I do have a very controlling... - or just a really passionate opinion about what our music should sound like, what our videos look like, what our style is, how we do our live show, and I’m not against suggestions as long as I agree with them (laughs)!
(Skye) So I think that because we’ve been able to survive so well doing things independently we’ve learned from a lot of our mistakes and from our history that we can survive pretty well doing it this way, but if you wanna go to another level you need a bigger team, you need to have support and that’s one thing that I’m terrible at sometimes, asking for help from people who are actually willing to give it and want to be part of it but I’m always like “I can do that, I can do that myself, I can do that myself!” so I don’t want to say that’s out of the realm of possibilities.
(Skye) We’re trying to have a few conversations here and there, there has been some names that have floated through so maybe... (me: “are you allowed to mention any names?”) uh, no it’s all kind of back door talk with the business people behind the scenes but yeah there’s a possibility that maybe the new record might be on a label, but there’s also a very good possibility that we’ll just crowd fund and put it out ourselves as well. I think that’s kind of a tricky moment because we want to not stop, we want to move forward and I think sometimes when you get too many people involved it slows the process down a little bit and we don’t like that, we like moving forward. Just the fact that we haven’t had a new single out for this tour is already making us feel like “ohh we have so many cool songs we wanna release!” so we're already biting at the bit to get some new stuff out. We don’t wanna hold back for next year so there’s definitely going to be an album coming out next year.”
And on that (possible) bombshell the interview wrapped and I thanked Skye very much for her time. Once she freed me from the camper I went off to enjoy their show, which I did very very much. To paraphrase an earlier comment from Skye: between this interview and the band’s awesome performance that night, it was a great day
And on that (possible) bombshell the interview wrapped and I thanked Skye very much for her time. Once she freed me from the camper I went off to enjoy their show, which I did very very much. To paraphrase an earlier comment from Skye: between this interview and the band’s awesome performance that night, it was a great day