Samurai Pizza Cats: Breaking The Game
There’s a point where things are supposed to settle. Second album, growing attention, a clearer sense of identity, the moment where a band either sharpens into something defined or smooths itself into something more digestible. It’s a familiar arc, one that most bands follow whether they intend to or not. SAMURAI PIZZA CATS don’t seem particularly interested in that trajectory.
Speaking about Press Start, their second album, vocalist Sebastian doesn’t frame it as a clean step forward so much as something more uncertain, more personal. “We are very nervous, it’s a new chapter for us, we are so proud of what we have produced there,” he admits, the excitement and pressure sitting side by side.
Where their debut established the band’s chaotic, self-aware identity, this follow-up doesn’t try to refine it, it stretches it. The humour is still there, the hyperactive energy still front and centre. It feels sharper this time, more deliberate in how it hits. “We’re always trying to find that line where it almost falls apart,” Sebastian explains. “If it feels too safe, it’s probably not us anymore.”
It’s a telling insight, because for all its colour and absurdity, Press Start doesn’t come across as careless. If anything, it feels calculated in how far it pushes things, constantly flirting with excess without ever fully losing control. That tension sits at the core of the record, even if the band themselves don’t over-explain it. “We originally just wanted to make a few songs and have fun with it,” he says. “It somehow got its own dynamic along the way, we said let’s just press start right here.”
That sense of spontaneity carries through into the album’s collaborations, which feel less like strategic additions and more like deliberate curveballs. Working with Spanish alternative metallers ANKOR on one of the record’s heavier moments brought a different kind of intensity into the mix. “All the songs were done before we thought about the feature, but we liked how they sounded so just called them up,” Sebastian recalls, the process as instinctive as the result.
On the other end of the spectrum, teaming up with BABYBEARD leans fully into the band’s more chaotic instincts. “That one was just pure madness,” he laughs. “I know we wanted these typical Japanese-type vocals for this and I was like… I know a guy.”
It’s that willingness to embrace risk, even when it borders on self-sabotage, that makes Press Start feel distinct. Because while humour has always been central to the band, it’s also the thing that complicates how they’re perceived. The word “gimmick” tends to hover around bands operating in this space, whether it’s spoken outright or not.
Sebastian doesn’t dismiss it entirely. “I get why people would say that,” he admits. “There’s definitely an element of exaggeration in what we do. But at the same time, if you strip everything back, the songs still have to stand on their own. Otherwise it wouldn’t work at all. It’s chaotic insanity.”
That balance between sincerity and absurdity is never fully resolved on Press Start, and that seems entirely intentional. The record doesn’t stop to clarify its intent or prove its depth, it simply exists in that blurred space where both things can be true at once. “Every song has its own stage, its own character,” he says. “The character is the theme of the song in a metaphorical way, that is the biggest influence we have when writing.”
Still, beneath the chaos, there are moments where something more grounded starts to surface. Not in a way that abandons the band’s identity, but in glimpses that suggest there’s more going on under the surface. It’s a perspective that becomes more relevant as the band continue to grow, because with that growth comes a different kind of pressure, not necessarily to change, but to maintain something that was never designed to be stable in the first place.
That contradiction sits at the heart of Press Start. It’s not a record that tries to resolve its own tensions or present a clear evolution. If anything, it leans further into them, testing how far the band can push their identity before it starts to crack.
Looking ahead, there’s no sense of a defined endpoint, no grand statement about what comes next for SAMURAI PIZZA CATS. “We’ve got a festival coming up and that makes us nervous,” Sebastian says. “When you put your name to something, it really means something to you.”
And maybe that’s the point. Not to settle, not to refine, not to press start and begin again but to stay in that space where everything still feels a little unpredictable, a little unstable, and entirely their own.
Press Start is out now via Century Media Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS130 here.
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