Castle Rat: Rulers Of The Realm

CASTLE RAT are something of a phenomenon in today’s underground. The self-styled fantasy doom outfit marry the aesthetics of 80s heavy metal and epic fantasy, filling their music with deep lore and crafting an entire world for it to reside in. Their debut album Enter the Realm was widely acclaimed, winning the hearts of so many fans that its follow-up, this year’s The Bestiary, was crowdfunded in less than an hour and it arrives less than two years after its predecessor. At the heart of CASTLE RAT is the Rat Queen – aka Riley Pinkerton – who has masterminded the band and created all of its characters and stories.

“One of my biggest ever loves was the Chronicles of Narnia,” she recalls of a childhood spent absorbed by fantastical realms of hers and others’ creation. “I think everyone has struggles and needs to be able to escape into a book and another world, where all the things you can dream of exist. When you’re in that space, it’s so comforting and it gives you a place to belong.” She recalls inventing her own worlds since she was five, creating games for others at school to play – something that’s now come full circle. “It’s funny,” she smiles, “I feel like I’ve gone through so many different versions of myself and wound up back at the most authentic childhood version of myself, just as an adult now.”

One of those versions was a stint as a folk musician, despite her burgeoning love of heavy metal and classic rock from BLACK SABBATH to LED ZEPPELIN. “It was all I felt I was capable of,” she admits. Attempting to funnel that love wasn’t quite working for her, either; “I wasn’t channeling it in a way that was authentic, I was just reacting to what I thought my limitations were.” Discovering the artwork of Frank Frazetta, the famed American fantasy artist, didn’t so much break down those walls as smash them entirely and show Riley what she really wanted to do.

“Frank Frazetta was really important to the development of CASTLE RAT. It broke down a lot of rules I had in my head that I didn’t know about,” she explains. “Things like, how I feel about myself as a woman, what my own personal beauty standard is that was so informed by popular culture. Seeing someone who would invest hours into painting like this ideal woman who’s strong and powerful, and ready to take down a T-Rex with a dagger. She’s standing in her power and also being soft and feminine. It made me realise there’s a totally other way to exist in the world that is beautiful and amazing. It totally rewired my brain, and I try to embody that with CASTLE RAT as much as possible.”

The band didn’t arrive fully formed, though; while its seeds were sown during her childhood, it took a fortuitous booking for the costumes and lore to emerge. “I knew the band was going to have rat in the name because that was my nickname growing up,” she explains. “It’s a loving nickname from my family, because I have two really big front teeth,” she chuckles. “Castles felt right because I knew it was going to be SABBATH-y.” Their earliest shows, the band played in all black, but the change that led to the emergence of characters The Rat Queen, the Plague Doctor, the All-Seeing Druid and the Count, took place one fateful Halloween night.

“Our third show we got booked for was an opening set for a Halloween show at St Vitus. Less than two weeks to the show I decided we should dress up, because it’s Halloween and I love dressing up.” Embodying the band’s DIY spirit, she thrifted medieval costumes, superglued a plastic rat head from a squeaky toy to a crown. Plus, “our guitarist already looked a bit vampiric so I just thought, stuff some pointy teeth in his head and call it a day,” Riley laughs. “It was so crude, but we had so much fun and it felt like we bottled lightning!”

Since then, the band have remained resolutely DIY wherever possible, crafting their own stage shows and even crowd-funding their second album The Bestiary, which managed to become the biggest metal Kickstarter campaign in a decade. They set what they felt was an ambitious target – $15,000 dollars to cover the costs of recording. “The next morning, I woke up and watched it. Within 37 minutes we’d hit our target and we were all asking, what the fuck just happened? And we still had 29 days to raise more money!” All in all, they raised close to $140,000, the vast majority of which they poured into the album, from getting real horn and string sections to the expanded rewards tiers on offer, as well as investing in their upcoming stage shows. “It gave us the space to do things exactly how we wanted. I’m really excited to share it, and I’m so happy with how it turned out.”

Though their lyrics are fantastical, the underlying themes are deeply personal, behind not just CASTLE RAT’s music but even their stage show. The Bestiary, while on its surface a selection of stories about the creatures and monsters that inhabit the Realm, is in fact a series of songs that are “representative of people that I know or experiences I’ve had,” she reveals. “I don’t think I could write without that, making up a story without there being some personal emotional connection to fuel it.” Even their stage show itself is carefully planned and choreographed to tell a story, with The Rat Queen being struck down by the Realm’s resident villain, the Rat Reaperess, before the Plague Doctor revives the Rat Queen to claim victory.

Riley’s onstage “death” each night, as well as many of the songs’ themes and much of what CASTLE RAT sing about, are a way to address a very real, intrusive fear of death she’s carried for many years – not that she realised that’s what was happening, at first. “It took me a couple of years to figure that out,” Riley laughs before soberly continuing, “which is hilarious because the outline is literally that I battle death every night. It’s a very real thing that I struggle with regularly. I  try to unpack it in therapy and I just don’t know if there’s a way to. I struggle with intrusive thoughts, especially when I’m stressed out or anxious. It’s endless at times and it’s very overwhelming.”

Recently though, Riley’s found this lessened; while the thoughts still rear their head as she’s used to, on their recent tours it’s been accompanied with a realisation that with CASTLE RAT, she’s truly happy and satisfied. “On stage, I’m just trying to remember to duck,” she chuckles. “I’m fulfilling my dream, playing shows every night, even on the tiniest of stages, with my best friends. I’m doing the thing I love, being fully creative and present every night. I feel so satisfied and so fulfilled, that even though I want to do so much more, if it had to end right now, I would be satisfied with the life I’m living.

The Bestiary is out now via Blues Funeral Recordings/King Volume Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS124 here:

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