While many a rocker has cribbed from high fantasy, few have truly walked the walk. Sure, they might bedeck their album sleeves with ghouls, goblins, manacled maidens and brawny barbarians, but did a member of Cirith Ungol ever have to retrieve a missing unicorn horn from a snowy field in the depths of winter? Has Yngwie Malmsteen spent time squinting in the back of a tour bus, repairing his own chainmail?<\/p>\n
Formed in 2019, Brooklyn\u2019s Castle Rat have had to face both these scenarios and more as they live out their epic fantasies. From heraldic, earworm-heavy anthems to eye-popping live shows, costume design, videos and album art, they\u2019re not so much a metal band as a full immersive experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cCastle Rat wasn\u2019t meant to be a costumed concept band,\u201d says singer, guitarist, sword-wielder and creative overlord Riley Pinkerton as the band\u2019s tour van speeds from a sold-out gig in Cologne to another in Aschaffenburg \u2013 they\u2019re also doing five gigs in the UK this week. \u201cWe played two shows and got booked on a Halloween gig, where I made a last-minute decision to dress up. It was all super-DIY, but we had so much fun and the feeling in the room was electric. I thought, \u2018What if we could have this much fun every time?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Since then, the band \u2013 which features Pinkerton as the \u201cRat Queen\u201d alongside a plague doctor (Charley Ruddell, bass), haughty vampire (Franco Vittore, guitar) and mysterious druid (Joshua Strmic, drums) \u2013 haven\u2019t looked back. The Bestiary, the band\u2019s second album, conjures visions of Black Sabbath<\/a>, Iron Maiden<\/a> and Manowar joining forces to battle their way through a Frank Frazetta fantasy world \u2013 a heroic opus that places them on the brink of far grander things.<\/p>\n The Bestiary was a first for Pinkerton in that she opened the floor to her bandmates. \u201cIt made it a lot stronger,\u201d she says of the collaborative process. \u201cI struggled at first \u2013 I\u2019d always felt a certain amount of pride being a woman in music going it alone. There\u2019ve been so many times where I\u2019ve got off stage and some guy will say, \u2018Those guys write great riffs!\u2019 and I\u2019m like, \u2018Hey \u2013 I wrote all that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n As the band\u2019s stature has grown, so has the scope of their production design. \u201cMy motto is always that if it\u2019s worth doing, it\u2019s worth overdoing,\u201d Pinkerton laughs. She was originally on course for a fine art degree before balking at the prospect of so much debt. \u201cThe fun thing about Castle Rat is there\u2019s so many different ways to apply artistic expression,\u201d she says. \u201cWhether it\u2019s making masks, costume design, learning how to edit music videos \u2026 it\u2019s all stuff I don\u2019t know how to do, but it\u2019s fun to figure it out on the fly.\u201d<\/p>\n As if building the band\u2019s intricate lore (\u201cEveryone\u2019s urging me to write it down because it\u2019s all in here,\u201d Riley says, tapping her head) and stitching garments wasn\u2019t enough, the singer taught herself how to make chainmail \u2013 no mean feat, though she admittedly left her all-new scalemail look to a New York-based specialist. \u201cIt feels like actual armour,\u201d she beams.<\/p>\n \u2018There\u2019s not an alternative version of the show where I don\u2019t have a sword\u2019 \u2026 Riley Pinkerton. Photograph: Peter Beste<\/p>\n As for audiences? They took to the fake blood, foam swords and papier-mache rat skulls with as much gusto as the band. \u201cWe played a show in Detroit and it looked like a Renaissance fair,\u201d recalls Riley fondly. \u201cEveryone was in cloaks, sheepskin, chainmail.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say, however, that life on the road as sword\u2019n\u2019sorcery vagabonds has been plain sailing. \u201cEverything is constantly breaking and ends up duct-taped together,\u201d Riley says. \u201cPlus I\u2019ll have endless ideas as to how I want things to look, but we\u2019re travelling in a van with only so much space. It\u2019s an interesting challenge to make it feel like a larger-than-life story, then pack it down into nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been other logistical problems that would never have plagued Conan the Cimmerian or Dark Agnes de Chastillon. \u201cWe did have an \u2018oh shit\u2019 moment when we played SonicBlast festival in Portugal and my luggage \u2013 which had my sword in it \u2013 got lost,\u201d says Riley. \u201cThat was a worst-case scenario, because there\u2019s not an alternative version of the show where I don\u2019t have a sword.\u201d<\/p>\n Like a true warrior queen, Riley is gung-ho about the future. \u201cI want to go all the way \u2013 let\u2019s do stadiums,\u201d she says. \u201cThe only thing that\u2019s really important to me is keeping the DIY aesthetic, making sure everything is handmade. That\u2019s an element I want to keep true, no matter what we scale to. Oh, and I want to ride out on a unicorn every night. You know how Rob Halford<\/a> does the motorcycle thing? That, but with a unicorn.\u201d<\/p>\n Castle Rat\u2019s UK tour commences at Concorde 2, Brighton, on 4 November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While many a rocker has cribbed from high fantasy, few have truly walked the walk. 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