“It was so emotional to see Ozzy Osbourne’s last show” – interview with Sebastian Fischer of Samurai Pizza Cats

Germany is one of the most prolific countries when it comes to metal, so it’s no surprise that the next guest of my interview is a German band. Samurai Pizza Cats are about to release a new album, so we chatted with lead vocalist Sebastian Fischer about music, live shows and of course, pizza!

Hey Sebastian, how are you doing at the moment?

Sebastian Fischer: I’m pretty fine. It’s been a long way until we are so close to our new album and I’m so so happy and so so nervous about it at the same time. But here we are, here we go and let’s freaking start.

Definitely, yeah and your band name alone creates an entire fictional universe in my opinion. What part of a universe feels closest to who you actually are as a person?

Sebastian Fischer: All of them. We are adventurers like samurais, we love pizza and cats are freaking awesome. So we are on any kind of that universe, we’re completely in that.

As an Italian, I can only appreciate your name. Was there like a serious idea that you’ve hidden inside one of the songs as a joke in the press start album?

Sebastian Fischer: Actually, there’s a kind of background theme in every song, I think. It begins with “Super Zero“. Some people think they’re superheroes in any kind of way, but at the end of the day, we know that we’re all the freaking same. Or like “Pandastruck“, every one of us has become kind of older in the days we started, like me as a child with a guitar in my hand and shouting some songs from any artist I know. And in the background, there’s always been the voice in your head that tells you “You can do something different, you can do something else, let’s produce some chaos, let’s do it crazy“. And yeah, let’s have some freaking fun. I think every single song on this album has like a hidden thing in behind. ‘T-Rex(plosion)’, the last single, it’s always about when there’s always someone like, who thinks he’s the greatest, he’s the biggest, but somehow everyone comes back to his knees one day. So I think somehow, there’s always a bit of a twink of an eye in every track.

So you’ve had some, some new official permanent member in Samurai Pizza Cats. Was there, when you were creating Press Start, a creative disagreement that somehow made a song better?

Sebastian Fischer: No, absolutely. Robin joined us in I think November or early October, somewhere around that. And it’s all just because of the reason, Stefan and we’re still friends, for God, we we know each other for about 15 years now. So everything’s fine. Everything went out good. The main problem are some private issues and like his work in life thing that wasn’t balancing anymore with this project. And he’s like, “I want to do something different. I’m doing music for 15 years now. And I want to do something else“. And he communicated it open as a friend, and we reacted as friends that we actually are. So everything went fine. There hasn’t been any debate or creative process that has been kind of complicated or something. Nothing like that. Everything’s always actually fine because every one of us knows each other for at least a minimum of five years or so. Daniel and I we have a 20 year friendship this year. It’s absolutely crazy. We know each other for so long. And yeah, Robin, we know him, I know him for about 11-12 years now. So somehow everything sticks together. Like a pizza dough.

Wonderful. Yeah. Is there something that fans do at the live shows that you secretly hope it becomes a tradition for Samurai Pizza Cats shows?

Sebastian Fischer: No, we never thought about that. We got a point that somehow on every German festival I have to take off my shirt, and I don’t know why this is happening. Every show is different because like we’re in a different mood, any kind of day. So is also also the people who attend the shows. And I think this is what gives the spice to every freaking show we do. I love it every day to to see a different people. To see them at the end of the day, partying together, whatever, if they came along to the show in a group of friends or something, I think this is what connects us and makes these shows feel like you’re real, I would say.

Yeah, authentic. So in 2025, we unfortunately lost Ozzy Osbourne. Was he or Black Sabbath, one of your influences when it comes to music?

Sebastian Fischer: Absolutely. I’ve been pretty shocked when I heard that he died. It was so emotional to see his last show. And shortly after that, to hear that this man that created such a scene or has made such a big progress in his lifetime in this music scene for decades… It’s absolutely crazy to see how someone can and you’ve seen it with Yungblud. How many people have somehow kind of been impressed by this person in kind of way. So yeah, surely he may have had his ups and downs and stuff. But at the end of the day, he did for lifespan, what actually was a stream. Like I said, one of the songs, “I’m just a dreamer“. And that’s what all of this is about. It’s just a freaking dream to do this, to have the option to say, “I can do this with all these people around me“. And yeah, I think this is real, real emotional, big thing to have this. Yeah. To have to chose to be able to choose this way.

Hosting your own festival is a huge milestone. What kind of culture or atmosphere do you want Samurai Pizza Fest to create?

Sebastian Fischer: We don’t just want to be it like these typical one-day-shows where several bands come around and have their set time or something. We want this to be a happening. We want everyone who attends to have a freaking good time to come here and to come there and to say, “Wow, what have I been seeing here?” We want all these people to be hooked up from the first second when they attend this festival to the last second, when we end our set on that day, to have everyone go out there with a big smile on their faces.

Amazing. Yeah. Can you share with us your family’s opinion or if they like Samurai Pizza Cats?

Sebastian Fischer: It somehow differs because currently, as you just experienced, I’m kind of busy all day at the moment and some are for a familiar thing or for friends in my nearest circle. It’s sometimes a bit like, “Oh, dude, when do you put this phone away? When are you having free time and stuff?” But actually, they’re fine with it because as I just mentioned with this Ozzy theme, it’s a kind of dream, a kind of getting to live on some days. It’s for sure, there are days you’re getting up and you think, “Dude, not today“. But five minutes later, you think, “Oh, my God. Yeah, let’s go. Let’s do this. Let’s work on this. Let’s do it“.

I wanted to play a little game with you, if that’s all right. You have to cast each member, including yourself, of Samurai Pizza Cats. So, you, Daniel, Stefan and Robin as Star Wars characters.

Sebastian Fischer: Oh, God, that could be fun, but it also could get the boys angry in the end. Daniel is like my personal Leia, I think. Stefan, he is big, he’s enormous. He is like this big kind of Nordish guy. He’s like my Chewbacca. I am Han Solo. And Robin. Robin is new to the game. So, we’re actually more like a new character. What are the new ones? I’ve not been into the new movies really deeply into. Robin could be like… Robin could be R2D2, since he starts with R or like BB-8, maybe.

Who is the messiest person of the band?

Sebastian Fischer: I think I am. My life sometimes is a freaking mess. I’m like a kind of character, kind of person who is more like, “Oh, I got to do this. I got to do that. Oh, yeah. I wanted to do this five minutes ago. Oh, I forgot to do that yesterday.” And yeah, that’s how someone like this room also looks like. That’s a jacket I wanted to reproduce for something different for a project. Yeah, it lies there around like for about four weeks now. And that somehow drives my boys crazy sometimes. Particularly Daniel. Sometimes he would like to think like to kill me, I think.

Returning to the Ozzy Osbourne last show, Lzzy Hale was the only female to participate and perform in that show. Do you think that will there ever be somehow an equality between men and women in the metal or in the music industry in general?

Sebastian Fischer: I think that that’s a really big theme, not just in music, even in all this working class stuff and discussions on a political way. I think there is a kind of change going on. But I think that humankind for all of us loves to do it. We’ve always done it like that way. And I think that is the main problem why those things sometimes seem not to progress at the moment. I mean, there’s stuff going on and there’s stuff happening and I love to see it happening because we, in our project, often have features in our songs. We also want to have features that are female in our songs, not just because of this equality thing. Because I don’t want to to talk it big, we are artists and we want to do something together, whether it’s female or male or whatever. It doesn’t matter in this because it’s an artistic way to have something produced together, for the people around us who like to hear this kind of music. If people would like in this kind of thing, like to risk more and maybe risk that there are maybe 20 people less attending to a show, I think we would make these festivals more organized in a female-made way.

Yeah, for sure. And speaking of festivals, even now or even before you started Samurai Pizza Cats, did you attend any festival? Did you have a favorite one or a memory that you have hold dear to your?

Sebastian Fischer: I will never in my career forget the Summer Breeze show when we opened the main stage on a Friday or Saturday, I think. And we’ve been like, “OK, it’s an opening slot, guys. And I don’t think there will be a lot of people, but it will be a cool day. It will be a cool show. So let’s have fun. Let’s do this. It’s a great stage. It’s great. It’s a great experience to do it here“. And yeah, what I didn’t know was that our team that attended to the show also tricked us a bit. In fact, the main stage was pretty freaking full. It was filled to the top for our opening slot. It was absolutely crazy. And Chris, our drum tech, 10 seconds before the show began, came to me and said, “Brother, don’t bother. It’s OK. It will be a great show. There are not a lot of people, but it’s fine”. And I’ve been like, “OK, yeah, OK. But it’s still a cool festival. It will be great“. And I came out and really the tears rinsed down my eyes at the same second. I forgot I had this mask on. I thought, “Thank God I’m wearing this mask right now“. I was crying like a little child because it was so emotional. It’s always getting emotional at these shows when you see how many people are attending actually to our shows. We are always planning stuff and we are planning tours and stuff and always think, “Oh, my God, I hope it works“. And somehow, thank God, it temporarily works every time. And we have never made a bad experience until now. I mean, it can happen. But on the other hand, always when you see something happen like that, me, I’m getting very emotional. I think it’s because I’m getting older.

Sebastian, thank you so much for being such a good sport and for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else that you’d like to add to our readers?

Sebastian Fischer: Yeah, thank you so much for your freaking support. As already mentioned, it’s such such a great thing to have this option to do all this and also including this interview and spending time with Benedetta. And I have to thank you all that you guys are making this happen.