Needed a break from work so headed down to The Exchange, a local venue, and took a chance on a band I’d never heard before…
…Lucky me! Turned out the band in question was Sumo Cyco – and they rocked.
Carrying a full hour-and-a-half plus on stage takes a lot more than good tunes – though Sumo Cyco have those in spades. I admire those – relatively rare – bands with the smarts to make a show flow, switch, change, stay persistently engaging and avoid repetition.
How to go about it? Well, impressively, it sure as heck doesn’t mean having an acoustic guitar-led break to kill the energy. First things first, it makes a world of difference to see a band who look like they’re having a whale of a time. I couldn’t take my eyes off Matt Trozzi – drums – who grinned from start to finish while drumming so hard it looked like he had extra limbs. Meanwhile, on bass, Oscar Anesetti bears an uncanny resemblance to a really young Kirk Hammett and merrily engaged with the audience, pulled faces and tearing it up from the start to finish. At the heart of the band, Skye ‘Sever’ Sweetnam and Matt ‘MD13’ Drake, laughed, joked, and led the party.
Enthusiasm can get anyone a certain distance, add a ton of talent and you’ll wind up miles in front. The band were so sharp. Drake, Anesetti and Trozzi never missed a beat at any point. At one point Drake played his guitar one-handed while sipping a beer he briefly used as a slide, at another he was riffing at one side of the stage then bounded over to sing lines into Sever’s mic. Sever meanwhile called the audience close together to allow her to crowd surf on her back while continuing to hit every note.
Thank god this is a band that didn’t just rely on eternal calls to ‘put your hands in the air’ or to clap along or cheer – there was some of that, it’s a gig so what the hey(!), but it always fitted and was used sparingly. Instead, every band member – bar Trozzi – took a shot performing from on top of the monitor at front centre or flying kicking off of it. Sever wound up in the crowd quite a few times whether encouraging a moshpit (and skillfully whipping out of the way before it got too crazy), or getting the audience to form a circle around her as she sang; being carried through the crowd on Drake’s back; later persuading the entire room to crouch down, sing along and get ready to launch back up en masse. A total blast! The band knew how to use the stage, the crowd, their instruments, their good spirit…What a combination. The use of tapes to fill gaps between songs, keep momentum, deviate from the guitar-bass-drums-vocals approach, made for some good moments of fun too.
The set-list was kick ass, new songs for the upcoming third album were carefully laced into the set (and all sounded great); songs like ‘Love You Wrong’ or ‘Run With The Giants’ led to singalongs (I learnt quick); the vibe varied from pop rock, to punk, to heavy rock – I’d promised not to headbang because my neck and back are sore at the moment but how could I resist? A brief bass solo was a nice surprise, guitar solos glowed white hot, Sever’s voice carries a crowd at all times.
All in all, what a quality use of an unplanned evening! Sumo Cyco smashed it in Bristol.
Nirvana Legacy 