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While plenty of musicians have taken inspiration from epic fantasy, only a handful have truly lived the enchanted way of life. Admittedly, they could embellish their album sleeves with ghouls, goblins, manacled maidens and muscular warriors, but did a member ever needed to recover a misplaced horn from a unicorn from a wintry landscape in the depths of winter? Did a guitarist spent time peering in the interior of a traveling vehicle, fixing their own metal mesh?

Living the Fantasy

Created in 2019, New York’s Castle Rat have encountered such situations and more as they embody their grand tales. From heraldic, catchy tunes to stunning performances, outfit creation, music videos and album art, they’re not just a metal band as a complete sensory journey.

“The band wasn’t intended to be a costumed concept band,” explains singer, guitar player, sword-carrier and visionary Riley Pinkerton as the band’s tour van speeds from a full-capacity concert in Cologne to one more in another town – they have multiple performances in the UK currently. “After a couple of performances and received an offer on a spooky event, where I made a last-minute decision to put on an outfit. The entire setup was highly handmade, but we had so much fun and the feeling in the room was electric. I realized, ‘How about if we could have so much excitement always?’”

Development of Castle Rat

From that point on, the group – which showcases Pinkerton as the “Queen Rat” alongside a plague doctor (low-end instrumentalist), haughty vampire (six-string player) and mysterious druid (rhythm keeper) – continued forward. The Bestiary, the follow-up record, brings to mind of classic metal icons uniting to fight their path through a Frank Frazetta fantasy world – a heroic opus that sets them on the verge of bigger achievements.

This album was a initial step for Pinkerton in that she opened the floor to her bandmates. “This helped a lot stronger project,” she says of the team effort. “I had difficulty at first – I’d always felt a certain amount of satisfaction as a woman in music working independently. There have been multiple instances where I finished performing and an audience member will say, ‘Those guys compose cool melodies!’ and I think, ‘Listen – I composed all that.’”

Creative Output and Ideas

As the band’s stature has increased, so has the scale of their visual elements. “My philosophy is always that if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” Pinkerton chuckles. At first, she had been on track for a art school education before hesitating at the possibility of financial burden. “What’s enjoyable about Castle Rat is there’s various avenues to express artistic expression,” she says. “Whether it’s making masks, costume design, figuring out video editing clips … everything is I am unfamiliar with, but it’s exciting to discover on the fly.”

Even though developing the group’s detailed mythology (“People are encouraging me to record 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 difficult task, though she admittedly entrusted her completely original scale armor design to a expert from NYC. “It feels like actual armour,” she smiles proudly.

Audience Reaction and Challenges

As for audiences? They loved the theatrical gore, foam swords and papier-mache rat skulls with equal enthusiasm as the group. “We played a gig in Detroit and it resembled a historical festival,” reminisces Riley fondly. “The whole crowd was in robes, animal hides, metal wear.”

However, this doesn’t mean, nevertheless, that life on the road as sword’n’sorcery vagabonds has been smooth. “Each item is constantly breaking and ends up duct-taped together,” Riley says. “Plus I come up with endless ideas as to how I desire the presentation, but we are on the move in a bus with restricted capacity. It’s a unique problem to create the impression like a larger-than-life story, then compress it into a small space.”

We’ve encountered further organizational challenges that didn’t affect mythic characters. “We did have an ‘disastrous’ moment when we played SonicBlast festival in the European country and my baggage – which had my blade in it – got lost,” says Riley. “It was a terrible situation, because there is no an backup plan of the show where I am without a blade.”

Future Ambitions

Like a true warrior queen, Riley is gung-ho about the future. “I aim to reach all the way – we should play huge arenas,” she says. “The key element that’s really important to me is keeping the self-crafted look, guaranteeing everything is custom-made. It’s a component I want to keep true to, no matter what we achieve. Additionally, I wish to ride out on a unicorn each show. Think about how some artists ride bikes on stage? The same idea, but with a unicorn.”