{"id":23998,"date":"2025-09-18T16:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/23998\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T16:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:20:07","slug":"castle-rat-high-priestess-rat-queen-talks-the-bestiary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/23998\/","title":{"rendered":"Castle Rat High Priestess Rat Queen Talks &#8216;The Bestiary&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Castle Rat are back to fulfill all of your medieval fantasies with a new chapter in their fantastical lore. \u201cThe Bestiary finds Castle Rat entrusted with a Book of Beasts bestowed upon us by a great and powerful Wizard,\u201d high priestess and frontwoman Riley Pinkerton (AKA Rat Queen) states. \u201cWe are on a mission to protect the book\u2014a sacred text capable of summoning mythic beasts\u2014from our relentless arch nemeses, Death, Herself\u2014The Rat Reaperess.\u201d The album\u2019s songs are designed to be a \u201ccyclical path \u2026 to summon the beasts, and an ode to the mysticism imparted upon us by The Wizard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Castle Rat, led by Pinkerton, along with the\u00a0Count (Franco Vittore)\u00a0on guitar, the\u00a0Plague Doctor (Ronnie Lanzilotta)\u00a0on bass, and the\u00a0All Seeing Druid (Joshua Strmic)\u00a0on drums, is set to drop the The Bestiary on Sept 19 as a cross Atlantic joint release with King Volume Records and the U.K.\u2019s Blues Funeral Recordings. The album is a departure from their previous work, with a more collaborative and immersive writing and recording process.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-532464\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2024-11-15_castlerat_geoffreysmithii-16-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wrote The Bestiary as a group, which was new for us,\u201d Pinkerton explains. \u201cI would bring in song ideas or basic song structures and lyrics and we\u2019d work on arranging them together. Franco wrote a song, Charley wrote a song.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This collective energy was captured in Woodstock, NY, at Applehead, a studio Pinkerton describes as a \u201cbeautiful studio and setting. We\u2019d wake up every day at the studio and have breakfast and walk around the snowy creek and then record all day. It was really immersive and intense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The band\u2019s strong, empowered femme presence is a key element of their identity. Pinkerton emphasizes their goal is to provide a world for listeners to enter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s important for us to give people a world to step into outside of their own,\u201d she says. \u201cIf having a strong female presence makes people happy, then that\u2019s great. We want people to feel the world building and experience the details and ideas. What \u2018The Realm\u2019 is and how people experience it is something we\u2019re always thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-532465\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2024-11-15_castlerat_geoffreysmithii-37-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>With the release of the new album, Castle Rat are also debuting a new live show. Pinkerton is excited for fans to experience it, noting that there\u2019s \u201cconsiderably more action and music and drama than in our previous show.\u201d Some of the new tracks have already been tested on audiences with great success. \u201cWe\u2019ve been performing a few new songs live,\u201d she shares, mentioning that \u201c\u2018Wizard\u2019 is always exciting to play. There\u2019s a thrashy unreleased song called \u2018Siren\u2019 that crowds have been really responding to.\u201d As for what comes next, Pinkerton is keeping a lid on any future projects. \u201cYou\u2019ll just have to re-enter The Realm and experience it yourself,\u201d she teases.<\/p>\n<p>The Bestiary\u00a0is out tomorrow on King Volume Records and Blues Funeral Recordings, and you can preorder it <a style=\"color: #ff0000\" href=\"https:\/\/castlerat.bandcamp.com\/album\/the-bestiary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">here<\/a>. Follow Castle Rat on <a style=\"color: #ff0000\" href=\"https:\/\/instagram.com\/castle.rat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Instagram<\/a> for future updates.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Castle Rat are back to fulfill all of your medieval fantasies with a new chapter in their fantastical&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-23998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}