By Jase Walker
While the world of rock and metal is often focused around the massive names of North America, Australia and the Nordics, one country is quietly brimming with incredible bands right now and that’s Germany. Deeper still though, German bands that are turning established norms on their heads and injecting a sense of absurdist humour into the mix such as We Butter The Bread With Butter, The Butcher Sisters or, in this case, Samurai Pizza Cats.
Taking their name from a humorous ’90s anime series of the same name revolving around cybernetic cats delivering pizza, this band caught my attention with their previous album, ‘You’re Hellcome’, back in 2023 thanks to Spotify’s random track selection following listening to Electric Callboy’s ‘Tekkno’ for the millionth time.
It’s easy to palm this sort of stuff off as totally unserious because in some ways it definitely is, but it’s hard to deny that the music goes hard as fuck and with their forthcoming album, ‘Press Start’, this trend is still continuing. Absolutely packed with riffs, strong electronic elements, sudden genre shifts mid song but maintaining a playfulness all the way through it.
The first thing my eyes were drawn to when I was checking the track listing is one of the weirdest features i’ve seen on an album on the track ‘Ramen-man’ featuring BABYBEARD – who for those that aren’t aware are a kawaii-core metal band from Japan featuring Ladybeard, a rather large gentleman ex-wrestler who left Australia and became a TV personality in Japan.
‘T-Rex(plosion)’ also features Spanish metalcore outfit ANKOR as another fantastic feature on this album, adding a bit of poppy spice into the mix but of course never straying too far away from tasty riffs and a big chorus.
Essentially what this album boils down to is the fact that metal can be unserious and fun while still going pretty hard with solid riffs and intricate songwriting. Samurai Pizza Cats epitomises this alongside their countrymen in the previously mentioned bands, there’s a time and a place for grimdark and emotional metal that the likes of Lorna Shore represent but there’s also room in the culture for being a bit silly and bouncing around to a fat riff.
Many of the tracks on this album are unabashedly big anthems, whether you’re getting your raving shoes on for ‘Error 808’ or warming up your vocal chords to keep singing along to the more emo-y chorus for ‘Penguin Supreme’, it’s pretty clear that Samurai Pizza Cats aren’t held back by established convention or uh, whether they think something a bit cringe or not.
This album is more or less exactly what I expected but this is far from a bad thing. Samurai Pizza Cats are out to make metal fun, throw down while screaming absolute nonsense and then jump around for some cheesy pop choruses, it’s all in there.
Whoever said Germans didn’t have a sense of humour? They’re making some of the most absurd stuff around right now and you’d be daft to sleep on it.
- ‘Press Start‘ is out now.
- Samurai Pizza Cats tour in October:
