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While plenty of rockers have borrowed from high fantasy, few have fully embraced the fantasy existence. Admittedly, they could embellish their album sleeves with monsters, beasts, chained damsels and brawny barbarians, but has an artist ever been forced to recover a missing mythical horn from a wintry landscape in the midst of winter? Did a guitarist spent time straining their eyes in the rear of a tour bus, fixing their own armor?

Immersed in the Legend

Established in 2019, Brooklyn’s Castle Rat have dealt with these exact challenges and others as they live out their grand tales. Starting with heraldic, catchy songs to eye-popping live shows, outfit creation, videos and album art, they’re not so much a heavy metal group as a full immersive experience.

“It wasn’t planned to be a themed musical group,” says vocalist, guitarist, sword-carrier and creative overlord Riley Pinkerton as the musicians’ transport travels from a sold-out gig in a German city to one more in another town – they have several shows in the UK currently. “After a couple of performances and received an offer on a October show, where I made a last-minute decision to wear a costume. Everything was super-DIY, but we had so much fun and the feeling in the room was incredible. I thought, ‘Imagine if we could have such enjoyment always?’”

Growth of the Group

From that point on, the ensemble – which showcases Pinkerton as the “Rat Queen” alongside a medic from history (low-end instrumentalist), proud bloodsucker (six-string player) and enigmatic nature priest (percussionist) – continued forward. The new record, the group’s sophomore release, brings to mind of legendary heavy bands uniting to struggle onward through a Frank Frazetta fantasy world – a grand composition that positions them on the brink of far grander things.

This album was a initial step for Pinkerton in that she welcomed contributions to her bandmates. “That contributed to a much better project,” she says of the team effort. “It was challenging at first – I’d always felt a specific level of accomplishment as a woman in music working independently. There’ve been so many times where after a show and a person will say, ‘The band compose cool melodies!’ and I think, ‘Hey – I created all that.’”

Creative Output and Ideas

As their fame has increased, so has the scope of their stage presentation. “My motto is always that if an effort matters, it’s worth overdoing,” Pinkerton laughs. At first, she had been on track for a art school education before balking at the possibility of financial burden. “What’s enjoyable about Castle Rat is there’s so many different ways to demonstrate creativity,” she says. “Whether it’s making masks, outfit planning, learning how to edit song visuals … everything is I don’t know how to do, but it’s fun to figure it out on the fly.”

As if building the ensemble’s complex backstory (“People are encouraging me to document it because all the ideas are,” Riley says, tapping her head) and sewing costumes were insufficient, the vocalist taught herself how to create armor – a challenging endeavor, though she confessedly left her all-new scale armor design to a New York-based specialist. “It seems like actual armour,” she grins.

Fan Response and Obstacles

Regarding the fans? They took to the theatrical gore, soft weapons and crafted rodent bones with equal enthusiasm as the band. “We performed a concert in Detroit and it looked like a medieval event,” remembers Riley with affection. “All attendees was in cloaks, wool garments, metal wear.”

That’s not to imply, though, that life on the road as sword’n’sorcery vagabonds has been easy. “Each item is always failing and becomes repaired with tape,” Riley says. “Additionally I get numerous thoughts as to how I desire the presentation, but we tour in a bus with limited room. It’s a unique problem to give the sense like a grand epic, then compress it into nothing.”

We’ve encountered further organizational challenges that would never have plagued legendary fantasy heroes. “We experienced an ‘oh shit’ moment when we appeared at a Portuguese festival in the European country and my luggage – which had my sword in it – went missing,” says Riley. “It was a terrible situation, because we don’t have an backup plan of the performance where I lack a sword.”

Goals Ahead

Like a true warrior queen, Riley is eager about the what’s next. “I want to go all the way – let’s do huge arenas,” she says. “The key element that’s really important to me is maintaining the handmade style, guaranteeing everything is custom-made. This is a feature I want to keep true to, no matter what we scale to. Plus, I wish to make an entrance on a mythical beast at all performances. Think about how some artists do the motorcycle thing? Exactly that, but using a unicorn.”