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While plenty of musicians have borrowed from fantasy lore, rarely any have truly lived the fantasy existence. Admittedly, they could decorate their record jackets with ghouls, goblins, manacled maidens and strong fighters, but has an artist ever needed to find a misplaced unicorn horn from a wintry landscape in the midst of winter? Did a performer spent time squinting in the rear of a road transport, repairing their own metal mesh?

Living the Fantasy

Formed in 2019, the Brooklyn-based Castle Rat have encountered such situations and additional ones as they live out their grand tales. Starting with medieval-inspired, catchy songs to eye-popping performances, outfit creation, videos and record designs, they’re not so much a metal band as a total artistic immersion.

“Castle Rat wasn’t meant to be a outfit with characters,” states vocalist, guitar player, blade-handler and visionary Riley Pinkerton as the group’s vehicle travels from a packed show in a German city to one more in Aschaffenburg – they’re also doing several shows in the UK this week. “We played two shows and received an offer on a spooky event, where I made a last-minute decision to put on an outfit. It was all super-DIY, but we had so much fun and the atmosphere was electric. I thought, ‘What if we could have so much excitement at every show?’”

Development of Castle Rat

From that point on, the ensemble – which features Pinkerton as the “Rat Queen” together with a medic from history (bassist), aristocratic undead (lead guitarist) and secretive shaman (percussionist) – never turned back. Their latest album, the follow-up record, evokes images of legendary heavy bands joining forces to fight their path through a mythical painted realm – a heroic opus that places them on the edge of bigger achievements.

The Bestiary was a first for Pinkerton in that she opened the floor to her collaborators. “This helped a much better project,” she says of the team effort. “I had difficulty at first – I often experienced a particular degree of pride being a woman in music doing everything solo. There’ve been so many times where after a show and an audience member will say, ‘The band write great riffs!’ and I respond, ‘Listen – I created all that.’”

Artistic Expression and Vision

As their fame has increased, so has the breadth of their visual elements. “My motto is always that if something is valuable, it’s worth overdoing,” Pinkerton smiles. She was originally on track for a university studies in art before hesitating at the possibility of financial burden. “The exciting part about Castle Rat is there’s various avenues to demonstrate artistry,” she says. “Be it creating face coverings, costume design, mastering post-production music videos … everything is I don’t know how to do, but it’s fun to discover in the moment.”

As if creating the band’s intricate lore (“People are encouraging me to record it because it’s all in here,” Riley says, indicating her head) and making clothing wasn’t enough, the singer learned on her own how to make chainmail – no mean feat, though she admittedly left her brand-new reptilian-inspired outfit to a New York-based specialist. “It feels like actual armour,” she grins.

Audience Reaction and Challenges

As for audiences? They embraced the stage blood, soft weapons and crafted rodent bones with similar excitement as the band. “We played a gig in Detroit and it looked like a historical festival,” remembers Riley happily. “Everyone was in robes, wool garments, armor.”

That’s not to imply, however, that touring existence as sword’n’sorcery vagabonds has been easy. “Everything is frequently damaged and ends up duct-taped together,” Riley says. “Moreover I’ll have numerous thoughts as to how I want things to look, but we tour in a van with restricted capacity. It’s a unique problem to give the sense like a larger-than-life story, then compress it into a small space.”

There have been further organizational challenges that wouldn’t have troubled legendary fantasy heroes. “We did have an ‘disastrous’ moment when we performed at SonicBlast festival in Portugal and my suitcase – which had my sword in it – went missing,” says Riley. “It was a worst-case scenario, because we don’t have an backup plan of the show where I lack a sword.”

Future Ambitions

In the spirit of a hero, Riley is gung-ho about the what’s next. “I want to go to the top – let’s do stadiums,” she says. “The only thing that’s truly essential to me is preserving the handmade style, guaranteeing each detail is handmade. This is a feature I want to remain faithful to, regardless of we scale to. Oh, and I wish to ride out on a mythical beast at all performances. Remember how legends ride bikes on stage? Exactly that, but on a mythical creature.”