On blast: Sumo Cyco
'Asteroid' crashes with the band at their quirky best
While I thought the first two singles released from Sumo Cyco’s upcoming album Neon Void weren’t bad, they were just missing a little oomph in my opinion. “Asteroid,” which crashed to Earth earlier this week, delivers exactly what I want from the band.
If you’re not familiar with Sumo Cyco, well, they’re perhaps an acquired taste. Unless, of course, you’re like me and just love stuff that shouldn’t work together but somehow does. They play an odd blend of metal, punk, and pop that can be hit and miss, but when it hits, it hits hard.
The band is built around vocalist Skye Sweetnam (who goes by the alter ego Sever) and guitarist Matt Drake. Sweetnam entered the music scene in the early 2000s as a pop singer signed to Capitol Records. She toured with Britney Spears and did theme songs for Disney Channel shows, which makes the often-twisted character she plays in Sumo Cyco just a little bit stranger.
“Asteroid” features all of the quirky things that I love about the band, though. It bounces back and forth from a screaming metal verse to an electronic poppy bridge, and then it brings everything home with an infectiously catchy chorus. As with their best stuff, Sweetnam uses the sensibilities learned from her time in pop to deliver earworms, but she and Drake then blend them seamlessly with the more aggressive sounds. Often when I’m listening to their albums, my brain is telling me that I should hate this — it goes against everything in my metalhead history — but I can’t help but like it.
The visuals, as with most of Sumo Cyco’s videos, are colorful and bizarre to the point where you’re often not sure what’s going on and not really sure if you want to know, but it usually adds to the oddball charm. They’re just as much a part of what the band is about as the music.
I suspect they’re a love them or hate them band for most people, with not much in between, but a lot of their songs are very hard to get out of your head. How good or bad a thing that is will depend on you. If you check them out and spend the rest of the day humming “Fighter” or “Sleep Tight” against your will, don’t blame me.