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Sumo Cyco Interview: Skye Sweetnam, Matt Drake on NEON VOID

© 2025 Nir Regev / TheNaturalAristocrat.com

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Published

4 months ago

October 23, 2025

Nir Regev

Interview: Sumo Cyco lead singer & front woman Skye Sweetnam and guitarist Matt Drake spoke to The Natural Aristocrat® about touring live, their new album NEON VOID and more at New York Comic Con 2025!

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT (NIR REGEV): Was song “Free Yourself” about finally letting go or admitting you weren’t ready to?

SKYE SWEETNAM: “Free Yourself”, I think is empowering yourself to take charge of your life. And I believe that song is about freeing yourself from expectations or any type of things that are holding you back from living your full potential. And for me, when I wrote that I was actually really inspired by our manager at the time who was going through a gender transition.

I just thought it was so powerful that he could be himself and I thought he’s really freeing himself in the world. To be who you want to be, you know?

MATT DRAKE: Oh, that’s cool! I didn’t know that. It’s also cool you brought up a deep cut like that, that’s probably like 10 years ago. One of our faves that we play live a lot.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Speaking of that, I noticed when you guys started you were more in standard D tuning and you’ve really transitioned to Drop C more or less ever since. I was wondering what brought on that change?

MATT DRAKE: (smiles) You’re a guitar player, aren’t you? Yeah, like every year, every album got lower. Like basically I think it was by Initiation we were down to the Drop C, which actually, it’s even lower now.

We’re playing in Drop A Sharp is where we’re at right now. I think every year, we were trying to make another record & Skye and I were always trying to find our sound. There’s times where I feel like I was trying to push Skye to be even more metal and heavy.

Then I would try to push myself too and paying attention to newer music, I realized that bands were tuning lower and lower.

I like to stay on a six string. I don’t like to go to seven or eight. So I just started tuning everything a lot lower and then it pushes Skye into a lower register. I think her voice sounds fuller and meaner and that’s kind of what I was pushing for when I went that way.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah, I find my voice sits better in more of an Alto kind of vibe.

MATT DRAKE: Yeah, I mean it’s always been great but like over the years it’s an experiment. I don’t consider myself like a shredder of a guitar player but maybe innovative is the word.

I’m always trying to find some riffs and for me, because my hands aren’t really fast, I’ll change a lot of tunings to see what kind of riffs I can come up with.

So you’re playing in the same positions that you should on normal tunes but you get different notes. Right? So I just kind of play with tunings a lot and that’s kind of why I always experiment.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Nice picking that one up!

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Are there vocal techniques you learned in your pop days that you’ve had to unlearn from metal basically?

SKYE SWEETNAM: Oooh yeahhhh! I think that one of the things that really does not jive as well, but I do pull it out in select moments is like the musical theater voice.

Like the very pronounced everything that feels so clean and doesn’t have that grit or texture or attitude that you really want to have in metal music.

And this guy will call me out a lot of the time with vocals when we’re in the studio. He’ll give me like a scenario or maybe another artist to try to emulate when I am recording a take. And it will push me kind of outside of my comfort zone enough that I’ll find kind of a new placement or a new tone.

Then I can kind of use that in my toolbox in measured amounts. So it’s like, ‘Oh a little bit more grit but hold back a little bit here.’ You know? And so there’s lots of ways to play with vocals and I think that’s one thing we try to do.

Photo Credit: © 2025 Nir Regev / TheNaturalAristocrat.com

MATT DRAKE: Your question’s good though because her techniques really good. So the pop stuff gives her really good technique, she can learn new stuff easily. When an artist is singing, they can go sharp or flat sometimes by accident.

Skye’s one of those people because of her pop career working with a lot of people in a younger studio environment, learning how to sing properly. If it is starting to go flat or sharp or something like metal or punk or whatever, I can go, hey, like this is happening.

And she reverts back to the pop side of her training and goes ‘Cool. I know exactly how to make sure that note never goes flat anymore!’ And a lot of that kind of stuff is kind of neat as well.

SKYE SWEETNAM: I had some interesting vocal teachers along the way. One guy made me get down on all my hands and knees and bark like a dog. And I’m starting to question that in my later years!

MATT DRAKE: Are you kidding me?! Dude, that is not a vocal technique, just so you know!

SKYE SWEETNAM: That’s what I started to realize, now.

MATT DRAKE: I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about. Yeah, that’s f***ed!

SKYE SWEETNAM: (laughs)

MATT DRAKE: And we should talk about this after, when we’re off camera and find out who that was that did that. Because I’ve never heard of vocal training on your hands and knees barking like dogs.

SKYE SWEETNAM: I only went to him a couple times and then I was like, ‘This is is too weird for me!’

MATT DRAKE: Sounds kinky though, doesn’t it? In some weird way.

SKYE SWEETNAM: (laughs) Well that’s what I’m hoping, that I wasn’t. But my mind tells me it was.

MATT DRAKE: The things you learn! I’ve been working with you for how long now?

SKYE SWEETNAM: (laughs)

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: What’s the cruelest thing you’ve ever done to your voice? Where it felt like the next morning after a show you couldn’t even talk.

SKYE SWEETNAM: There is a specific moment. I actually remember this! We partied on Sunset Boulevard after our Whisky a Go Go show. We went to the Rainbow Room, we had a full night-

MATT DRAKE: Our drummer puked on the bar in the rainbow room while we carried him up the stairs and kept puking! You remember that? It was a really rough night.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yes, it was a really rough night. We were staying in our bus / RV that we had converted from like an old school bus, which had absolutely no air conditioning. So I had drank myself silly the night before-

MATT DRAKE: Which we don’t do anymore. We’re not those kind of people.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Woke up in this tin can, I felt like I was literally cooking. My body was cooking like in an oven and I was so dry it felt like I could cough up sand.

Literally, I just felt like I was completely dehydrated. My entire body had no moisture left in it. And I remember being like, ‘That was not a smart idea,’ because we are now headed into the desert, to Vegas for our next show. It’s not gonna get better from here! (laughs)

MATT DRAKE: We’ve had to cancel shows when Skye’s voice gets too popped. It’s the only time we’ve ever canceled shows, really. And one time our drummer did the same thing. Whenever somebody gets sick.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah, sickness does really take a lot out of you unfortunately.

MATT DRAKE: There was a time in England where your voice was popped. She’d sang fine one night and just went too hard partying, and the next day she couldn’t sing.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah, it’s usually the partying that gets me.

MATT DRAKE: But even with partying, if you’re doing vocal warmups and you know what you’re doing, you can still make it through usually.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Steamer! Use a steamer. That’s good.

MATT DRAKE: Yeah, best we can do.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Speaking of drummers, you might know that Kurt Cobain was always conflicted about his drummers before Dave Grohl. And even with Dave Grohl in the MTV Unplugged set during rehearsals.

For you guys, I’ve noticed you’ve switched up drummers quite a few times. So I was wondering what’s behind that?

SKYE SWEETNAM: There some long stories with these drummers!

MATT DRAKE: Woooh! We’re past four, we’re on five or six now. I think we’re on six right now. Well, okay, the truth is Skye and I write everything and create everything in our studio. So we don’t really need a drummer in the studio half the time when we’re writing.

When we first started there was, who was it? Ken (Corke) and Andy (Joseph) were our two main guys that started with us. Oh no, Legs (Ryan Leger) first started with us and our first drummer got taken from us and went to band “Every Time I Die”.

And then our second drummer didn’t like touring and stayed at home to become a music teacher. Our third drummer didn’t want to get the vaccine shot during pandemic, which we completely understand, everybody to each his own.

SKYE SWEETNAM: And we couldn’t tour with him.

MATT DRAKE: Yes, we couldn’t tour with him. So he decided that he was gonna stay home. And then our fourth drummer who really locked in with us for years, Joey (Muha), was killing it with us and was doing great. We love him. He’s still our family member. He got into a terrible car accident

SKYE SWEETNAM: In January.

MATT DRAKE: In January and it really, I wouldn’t say the word maim, but it screwed him up to the point where he can play drums but not perfect right now. He’s still healing probably a lot of physiotherapy, a lot of work.

He actually did come out and do one show with us ’cause we were in trouble and needed it. But it took a lot for him to get through that show. So Joey’s still part of the family but not playing with us right now.

And then we have a friend of ours through our bass player, we met this guy named Jeff who’s filling in for us right now. And so we haven’t really picked a full-time drummer, we’re just hiring somebody to work with us right now. Until we find out more about Joey too. ‘Cause we love our old drummer and he’s got a lot of healing to do.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: So he might return down the line?

MATT DRAKE: Well, I mean, I don’t wanna say that ’cause he’s had a lot of time off. People’s minds change as they’re working too. So I don’t want to speak for him, but we love him. I want him to get healthy! But he has a lot of healing to do.

That accident was bad. It was a bad accident. He was in a coma for a week. A lot of burns. It was rough for him. So he’s doing great now, but definitely not ready to go on the road. If we go on the road for 60 days, he’s not ready to do that.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Honorable mention to Sid who filled in for some music videos.

MATT DRAKE: Oh yeah! We have drummers that fill in for music videos in general. So we’ve got a lot of family members that fill in here and there. We are like the second Spinal Tap of drummers!

SKYE SWEETNAM: (laughs) Yeah!

MATT DRAKE: It’s just how it goes, you know? I mean, I play drums so I record a lot of it myself in the first place, when I’m recording. And then I’m hiring somebody to come and play with us half of the time.

And if I find somebody that I think is amazing and a family member, they stay with us until they don’t wanna be with us. So Joey, I hope you can get back here, but right now this guy Jeff that we barely know has filled in and he’s doing great. So we just roll like that, you know, whatever we have to do to get back into playing!

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: How did you approach this latest album, NEON VOID, in comparison to your other ones?

SKYE SWEETNAM: This album was a completely different process. We wrote over 60 songs.

MATT DRAKE: That guy’s got a rad Daredevil costume, look at that! That is Daredevil! over there! Sorry, my bad.

SKYE SWEETNAM: (laughs) The pros and cons of being at New York Comic Con is the distractions!

MATT DRAKE: Yeah, I get so easily distracted from the all the cosplays. But yeah, about making the record-

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah, it was very different for us for the process because we wrote so many songs before we kind of narrowed down our final track listing. Which isn’t really like us because we usually like to release a lot of the material that we write.

And usually if we finish a song, we think it justifiably should be released. But this one, because we were encouraged by our team to kind of experiment a little bit more. And to be honest-

MATT DRAKE: Our management really wanted us to. It’s record #4, write as many songs as possible, throw us as many ideas as you can. Way different than the other three records.

The other three records are literally like we just wrote 12 songs that we liked or 11 songs and we just moved. This one was a lot of songs, a lot of ideas.

A lot of asking questions! (laughs)

SKYE SWEETNAM: I also wrote on the piano on this one, which was different for us.

MATT DRAKE: We’d never written songs on piano. Skye wrote three or four of them on piano.A bunch of ideas on piano.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Which I’d never done before. We’ve always started with guitar, so that was different.

MATT DRAKE: Yeah, we always started music first and vocals second. And this was vocals first for a bunch of songs and music second, which is kind of interesting. We’ve never done it that way.

SKYE SWEETNAM: And then we also had an outside producer come and help with the full record. So Sam Guaiana came to our home studio. We spent the whole month of February together.

Matt and Sam co-produced the record. But literally we had never been in a situation where we were working on the album every single day of the month. Usually because we have our home studio, we can come in, come out, you know?

MATT DRAKE: The first three records, we were writing around our own schedule where this one, because we hired somebody to come in and work with us, we had already done a lot of it ourselves.

We asked them to come in and kind of scrutinize and be like a fourth eye or a fly on the wall and tell us ‘What do you think?’, you know.

And so it was interesting watching him come in and we had to work every day for about 30 days straight with this guy and make decisions really on the fly. Which sometimes it would take us weeks to do so.

It was interesting. It’s definitely good. Sam’s done a lot of cool stuff. He’s a really good mixer and engineer. He’s done Silverstein, Neck Deep, a bunch of cool bands. So he’s been around and I think our record sounds better than we’ve ever done so far. So I’m excited about it.

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Did you stack your vocals for different takes and screams?

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah, for sure!

MATT DRAKE: Less stacking this record than any of the others though!

SKYE SWEETNAM: You would do more?

MATT DRAKE: Back in the day, the last three records, I feel like we stacked all our vocals more. This record, I feel like you’re stacking, but I felt like we were pulling back, like we’re trying to sound more like what we would do live.

Does that make sense to you?

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah. There’s a lot of harmonies in there that Sam encouraged as well and some background parts that normally I wouldn’t think of or do.

Because I’m always like Matt said, always trying to think of how I’m gonna do this live. So if there’s like two overlapping parts, I’m like, ‘Then how am I gonna sing these live?’ (laughs)

But sometimes, you gotta do what’s best for the song and the recording. I think we all argued and figured out what was best in the end.

MATT DRAKE: Right now we’re in the process of playing these songs live now. We just started moving into like getting them live. We really started to put them (in the setlist), and it’s interesting trying to see the difference of how it comes together.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: You mentioned playing piano before and you remind me of a poppier sounding Maria Brink, from In This Moment. I was curious if you’d ever do a cover of “The Fighter” (Black Widow) or “Let Your Gun Down” from their Ritual album?

SKYE SWEETNAM: You never know! We do covers very few and far between to be honest, in this band. Which is not like a lot of other artists. We’re very, very super selective.

MATT DRAKE: I’d be more of a fan of Maria Brink covering us!

SKYE SWEETNAM: (laughs) Or a duet! We could maybe come up with a song together! That would be sick.

MATT DRAKE: I think we could do some kind of thing together. That’d be fun!

SKYE SWEETNAM: Yeah, that’d be sick!

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Awesome, thank you both!

MATT DRAKE: Thanks for having us!

SKYE SWEETNAM: Thank you!

– You can also watch this interview on our YouTube Channel. Be sure to Like, Comment, and Subcribe!

– Be sure to check out our exclusive
Skye Sweetnam NYCC Panel Photos!

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Nir Regev

Nir Regev is the founder of The Natural Aristocrat. You can directly contact him at [email protected] for coverage consideration, interview opportunities, or general comments.