Former Hamilton pop princess reborn as heavy metal mistress
Skye Sweetnam has spent the last few years in an old converted church near Binbrook, making the transformation from teen pop star to mistress of heavy metal.
The transition is now complete with the recent signing of her band, Sumo Cyco, to the international metal label Napalm Records and the May 7 release of their new album Initiation."
You may remember Sweetnam. At the age of 14, the native of Bolton, Ont., wrote and recorded a cheeky little pop number called Billy S" - short for William Shakespeare, whose work she didn't like reading in high school. It was a radio hit and landed her a spot on Britney Spears' 2004 Onyx Hotel" tour.
Sweetnam seemed destined for pop stardom.
Her guitarist on that tour was a hard-edged Hamilton rocker named Matt Drake, best known on the local music scene for his urban ska band Dodger. Sweetnam and Drake hit it off, at first musically, and eventually, a few years later, romantically.
Sweetnam's pop stardom was short lived, however. Her second solo album gained little traction and she found herself touring Canada in minivans rather than the posh tour buses she had become accustomed to.
Having been in the music industry at such a young age, I came to have a feeling that there was a yellow-brick-road path laid out for me," Sweetnam says in an interview from the converted church she now shares with Drake on the outskirts of Binbrook. I had all these amazing opportunities. But then you start seeing the cracks in the road, how you can get too integrated into the Hollywood world and how you can forget about who you really are artistically."
When her pop career began to wane, Sweetnam reconnected with Drake and she began to explore the possibilities of a heavier sound, something that would merge her pop background with punk and metal. In 2011, the two began writing songs and creating YouTube videos under the name Sumo Cyco. They made their new home in Binbrook a base of operations.
In song lyrics, Sweetnam developed a comic-book fantasy world based around a place called Cyco City. She began making elaborate videos to tell the stories. The videos gained a following and, in 2014, Sumo Cyco produced its first album Lost in Cyco City." The band added a bass player and drummer and took the show on the road.
Sweetnam found new freedom performing to metal fans. Outlandish costumes became part of the act. Her stage name became Sever.
For me, performing in rock clubs was a whole different experience than performing in my more tame venues," Sweetnam, now 32, says. I would crowd surf, jump on the bar, get in with the kids. For me, it was a whole new experience of how to entertain. There was so much to explore. It opened up a lot of creativity in me."
Sumo Cyco released a second independent album, Opus Mar," in 2017 and continued to tour across North America and Europe, gaining opening spots for more established acts. At a 2019 show in New York City's Webster Hall, the band came to the attention of Austrian-based Napalm Records, one of the leading heavy metal labels in the world.
They signed with Napalm early last year, just before the first pandemic lockdown.
The pandemic, however, allowed them to concentrate on the new album Initiation," the band's first with Napalm. The group released three video singles: Bystander, No Surrender" and Vertigo" from the LP before its May 7 release. All three have received hundreds of thousands of views.
We've been taking it step by step, but getting a label like Napalm allows you to jump a few steps and get in front of a lot more people quicker, especially during this time when we can't go out on the road to gain that kind of exposure," Sweetnam says. They do have quite an audience, especially on YouTube. We've gotten more hits on our videos than we ever have before."