Interview: Skye (Sever) and Matt of Sumo Cyco

Sumo Cyco 192[avatar user=”Thorin” size=”50″ align=”left” /]I was lucky enough to get to have a chat with Skye (a.k.a. Sever) and Matt from Canadian punk band Sumo Cyco when they supported Fozzy recently.

How is the tour going so far?

Skye: Well I’ve been really enjoying myself, I love travelling and it’s been great waking up in a new city every day and meeting new people every day. It’s been great meeting all our fans or people who have just gotten into our band, really relating to the people. Some of our fans have been waiting a long time to see us perform, one girl in particular; Jasmine has waited nearly 10 years to see me perform and that sorta thing is so meaningful. I love getting to meet them face to face and be able to give them a hug.

Matt: it was her first concert ever and we basically popped her concert cherry. The tours been great and the bands have been a pleasure to tour with. These two bands have been lots of fun and it’s been an awesome time. The driving sucks, we’ve been trying to keep it under budget so we’ve been driving every day. London in particular can be difficult to drive through, especially the parking, which can be a nightmare. Other than that I absolutely love the city.

How do you feel the UK fans take you guys?

Skye: I actually think this market is suited towards us.

Matt: We want to move here.

Skye: In Canada it’s very hard to break through the music scene. To get on radio or on mainstream media has been difficult as we don’t believe we are the sorta mainstream style that is what Canada is looking for right now.

Matt: Canada has been difficult and a tough nut to crack.

Skye: We just jump to where the opportunities are. It seems right now that we’re getting a lot more options in the UK and Europe.

Matt: Europe has been great. I’m surprised we’ve never been to some of these places. Rotterdam was incredible and they really did seem to like us. The UK has always been a major pull and frankly if we could move here, we really would.

Speaking of Europe, we had the atrocities in Paris with the Eagles of Death Metal concert. Considering you played Paris shortly after, how was it to play there during that time? It must have been a nervous time.

Skye: We thought it was pretty crazy as it was at a rock show, it just really hit home as that’s what we’re doing every day. It’s a place where people have fun and it was just so unexpected.

Matt: November was our first show with Fozzy in Rotterdam and literally after the show after everyone has cleared out, we’re chilling out after an awesome show and the news broke that this happened. There were a lot of questions like are we still gonna be going to Paris, but Chris Jericho wanted to go and bring the rock to France and that’s what we did. There’s sombreness to the venue, there were loads of security and they were strict on vetting people. It was a shame to see all these bands cancelling, I understand they have families and they’re scared, but it’s a real shame. They accomplished what they wanted out of this as not only were a lot of people killed but now weeks later and people want to hide themselves away.

Skye: There was actually a guy outside our show that night who had been there at the Eagles of Death metals concert that night. He said how he had to barricade himself into one of the rooms and hope for the best. Then here he is again at a rock show which is what you have to do.

Matt: During Fozzy’s set someone handed Chris a French flag with Fozzy written on it and Jericho was really proud. It was awesome cause then Fozzy did a minute of noise instead of a minute of silence. The whole club screaming as loud as it could for a minute with Jericho holding up the flag.

So you guys have the one album out so far, how would you say the album has been received?

Skye: I think it’s been received very positively and I’ve been overwhelmed by it all as it’s gotten a lot of good reviews. The kids said they’ve listened to it all the time in their cars and it’s those sorta things that just makes it feel so rewarding.

Matt: I think it comes down to the fact that we’ve put these singles together for the record and we’ve had a good online presence. We made a record and we’ve done 5 tours in a year and a half. So we think it’s been well received and the shows keep growing, along with the fans.

Where did it all begin? What’s the story behind Sumo Cyco?

Skye: Well I met matt back in 2003 and I was auditioning people to start a band as I’d been a solo artist prior to this. Then I met Matt and I met Thor our base player. These guys had been in tons of bands and I was only 14 at the time, so I really looked up to these guys as they taught me about music. Through the years I’ve slowly got more influenced and developed more of a rebellious side to myself that always wanted to look for edgier rock. Things started dying down with my pop music around 18/19 years old and I came to Matt.

Matt: You were just grumpy about the lawyers and the industry behind your music. With these companies everyone has a say in everything and you’re not able to do what you want. Sky’s records were great, her second record was great and half the time people didn’t get to hear it as there were too many people involved, I don’t even think it was released in America. So they spent millions making this record and it didn’t go anywhere. I remember asking sky what do you want to do? What if we just made a band.

Skye: yeah I just wanted to get back to doing something I was passionate about and enjoyed.

Matt: I remember giving her Skindred’s Babylon record to listen to and she was like I wanna make a female equivalent of these guys and make it happen. So we started doing it as a sorta side project and now it’s kinda taken over.

Skye: matt had been in a band for 10 years but it was at a time of us meeting when we’d both been working on projects . We felt we needed some new energy.

Matt: We wanted something to be excited about again. Sky had run into a roadblock with the industry, I’d run into a roadblock with the band I was in. By putting our heads together I think we found this new niche. But I do think one day that Sky will go back to doing a solo record.

Skye: Well right now I’m just so hyped on what we do. People ask me all the time if I’ll go back to being solo, but you never know what will happen in the future.

So I know there’s a second album in the works, but where is the future of the band going and what have you got planned?

Skye: Well I would say with the second album and now we’ve done some touring and people have actually heard about us, we just wanna work on this record and make it awesome.

Matt: I’m one of those guys who just loves to keep writing. So if I’m not busy I’ll be in the studio and I’ve done this for about a year now while we’ve been touring, where I’ve been writing instrumentals. Sky has been like oh I like this, I don’t like that and we’ve worked on ideas. We’ve got about 15/16 Instrumentals which we’ve worked on and sky has done about 3 or 4 of them. If she can do 6 or 7 more like that then I believe we have a really solid record. Our first record took nearly 3 years. I normally think that second records can be a disaster as you have to get it out so much quicker but I think we’re on point by getting a head start. We’ve built a good basis and now sky has to come up with some hooks for it. We just want another great rock record. There is a producer from the UK who we’re trying to make this happen with James LeRock and he did the last 3 Skindred records. We met him last year and he did a record with us, which we had a blast doing. Then he helped us get the singer from Skindred to do a song with us, with Skye rapping the first verse and him rapping the second.

Skye: Well it was Skindred’s Babylon record that was a huge influence to us to getting to work with him was an amazing experience.

Matt: We don’t hide the facts that there are some bands that truly inspire us. I mean Skye is always talking about Gwen Stefanie and how much her music inspires her so with us it’s like Skindred meets Gwen Stefanie. So if we can properly work on this album with James, then we will be either working on it over here in London or flying him over to Canada. We were actually considering staying here for a few weeks after this tour to see if we could work on this album, but it has been a very hectic schedule. The end of this tour will be the end of our year, where we’re gonna work on this album and pound out these ideas.

Do you guys have any memories that you guys as a band will never forget?

Matt: Well the Skindred one was a big one that we mentioned before as it was essentially getting to work with one of our inspirations.

Skye: The moment that really got us was when he agreed to do it. He sent us a message saying he was working on a few ideas. We were on the road at the time, in Manchester and we went to a café to pull up the computer.

Matt: he asked us to send him the track and he said he’d get back to us with the ideas and literally two days later we got a reply.

Skye: I was like “ We got an email, We got on email!!” Then we had to go to the café and only had one set of earphones so we were all huddled around sharing these earphones. We were total geeks about it and squealing about it. Just hearing someone that inspired me to start this band, singing with my boys was just incredible.

Matt: The other one would be Gwen if we could get her on board to do a track.

Skye: Another memory would be warp tour.

Matt: We got a call asking us to come to warp tour starting on the west coast. This was a big thing for us as it was something we had our eyes on. It’s not easy, it’s a gruelling tour, but we were happy to be involved.

Skye: it honestly was pretty cool to be a part of that. One of the moments that will stick with me and highlighted our band was at a competition called Indee week in Canada which helped us from going from the local venues to something much bigger. It was festival we signed up for on a whim without realising there was a competition element to it. They told us after our set that we won our round. This competition meant we could win a trip to play in Ireland.

Matt: They sent us to 5 or 6 gigs in Ireland, including Dublin and we had a blast.

Skye: It was so much fun, but really it was us winning that competition, that we were headed overseas that we said we have to capitalise on this.

Matt: we’ve been touring ever since that started.

Skye: It was thanks to that we made our way over to touring the UK and set up 10 more dates over here. Ever since then it’s pushed us to look at the world as our market and has pushed us.

Matt: To be honest if it was up to us, we’d be touring the UK every six months or at least once a year. We’ve got a great agent over here and he’s really believed in us.

So final question and it’s a change to what I’ve asked you so far, but if you guys had any super power, what would it be and why?

Matt: I love this question, there are a couple of things as a guy that I think about, but I think the power of flight would be incredible for me. I would love to be able to just walk out my front door and take to the sky. Go here there and everywhere. There’s that then there’s telekinesis and psychic powers would be amazing. I mean like Patrick Stewart? I love him, he’s one of the funniest guys in the world and he makes me howl, especially the bro-mance with him and Iain Mckellan.

Skye: I think it would be speed, I mean being able to run super-fast. I think super strength would be cool too, but it may mean me having to lift up the tour bus.

Matt: I’m still sold on flight, could you imagine if we could all fly? We would need cars anymore.

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