Q&A: Castle Rat’s Medieval Metal Fantasy Realm Conquers the Stage
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
CASTLE RAT’S REALM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART — NYC’s medieval fantasy metal warriors Castle Rat are preparing to storm their biggest stages yet, joining Swedish melodic death metal titans Amon Amarth and Dethklok on a monumental spring tour. And yet, even as they ride into battle alongside metal heavyweights, Castle Rat are playing two special headlining rituals on April 26 at The Pyramid Scheme and May 24 at House of Blues where The Realm will be theirs alone.
At the center of Castle Rat’s mythology stands “The Rat Queen,” Riley Pinkerton — rhythm guitarist, lead vocalist, and sovereign defender of The Realm. Joined by “The Count” (Franco Vittore) on lead guitar, “The Plague Doctor” (Charley Ruddell) on bass, and “The All-Seeing Druid” (Joshua Strmic) on drums.
Their latest full-length opus, The Bestiary, is an epic tale of mysticism, magic, and maleficence that has propelled the band into unprecedented critical acclaim. If their debut introduced audiences to the shadowy corners of their world, The Bestiary deepens the lore, cataloguing creatures and confronting their eternal foe: Death Herself, “The Rat Reaperess.”
“It's all beasts,” Pinkerton says to Luna. “They're all metaphorical representations of people or experiences in my own life. I'm always partial to dragons and unicorns. Those are my two favorites. They’re like yin and yang.”
Castle Rat’s sound fuses the occult groove of doom with classic heavy metal grandeur — think the thunder of Sabbath refracted through a Frazetta painting brought to life. The riffs are deliberate and crushing; the melodies soar like banners in wartime wind. This is fantasy, yes, but forged in steel.
Castle Rat’s live show has become the stuff of underground legend: choreographed battle sequences, theatrical confrontations with The Rat Reaperess, and an interactive call-to-arms that recruits fans into The Realm itself. Now, stepping onto larger stages with Amon Amarth and Dethklok, Castle Rat are entering an arena where scale amplifies everything. Bigger rooms mean bigger battles. More bodies mean louder war cries.
The headlining dates in Grand Rapids and Anaheim promise something even more intimate and unrestrained: full immersion into The Realm without time constraints.
With The Bestiary earning acclaim and a tour of this magnitude on the horizon, Castle Rat are no longer cult curiosities. They are ascendant. This spring, as they march alongside giants and summon their own devoted legions in Grand Rapids and Anaheim, the Realm is expanding. And Castle Rat is ready for war.
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
RILEY: I like it to feel like you're looking at a Frank Frazetta painting while listening to Black Sabbath is the shorthand version.
LUNA: It’s been about half a year since the release of your sophomore album The Bestiary. How has it felt to watch listeners connect with the album over time?
RILEY: It's been amazing. It feels like it's constantly reaching new people. It's been pretty mind blowing how much progress has been made and talking to people shortly after it came out, and having people say what their favorite songs were, means a lot. Having people come out and seeing them singing along with a song that came out a month ago, I'm like, I barely have all the words memorized.
LUNA: The Bestiary has been described as an epic tale of mysticism, magic and maleficence. The concept of a “bestiary” historically catalogs mythical creatures. What beasts — literal or metaphorical — were you most interested in confronting on this record?
RILEY: It's all beasts. They're all metaphorical representations of people or experiences in my own life. I'm always partial to dragons and unicorns. Those are my two favorites. They're like yin and yang. To me, I like the energy of both. I have a bunch of dragon and unicorn tattoos. I can't stop.
LUNA: Looking back at The Bestiary, how do you think you’ve matured as an artist and storyteller since its release?
RILEY: It was my first time opening myself up to collaborating with my bandmates. Into The Realm, I wrote everything myself, and I still started all the songs. I wrote the majority of the album, but I learned to step back and be like, Okay, I'm stuck here. I'm surrounded by these incredible musicians. I need to set my ego aside and serve the song. What are your ideas? And work more collaboratively. My favorite songs on the album are the ones that ended up being more collaborative.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on The Bestiary — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Castle Rat are right now?
RILEY: I feel like the standout track is “Wizard,” and also the central theme of the album is represented by that song. I'm really proud of that one, and that's one of the ones I'm thinking of that's one of the more collaborative ones.
LUNA: You’re embarking on a tour with Amon Amarth and Dethklok this spring — two bands known for their larger-than-life mythology and spectacle. You also have a few headlining dates as well Grand Rapids and Anaheim. Do you have any pre-show or post-show rituals or regimens that you do to prepare for such a high energy set?
RILEY: We always do a breathing circle before the show where we huddle and Josh, our drummer counts the breathing technique that gets the jitters out. We have a post-show ritual, which I've never told in an interview, but we do it for fun. It's in the van after the show, once we're driving to wherever we're staying, our ritual is we go around and we do softest ‘ho yeah.’ Everyone has to take a turn, and they have to do it as softly as they can, but it still has to be audible to everyone in the van, so you have to wait till you're at a stoplight. It's hilarious. We do it every night. It's the best decompression.
LUNA: What are you most excited to experience on this tour — bigger crowds, new cities, testing your stage production at a new level?
RILEY: I'm really excited to be playing larger stages where I can bring a little more firepower in terms of props I'm working on, like a 12 foot tall rat backpack puppet thing that's going to come out midway, hopefully, it's still in the works, and it's also our first time touring in a bus. I'm excited to see what that will be like sleeping in a bunk and living on a bus with a bunch of dudes. We'll see.
LUNA: Do you make your own costumes?
RILEY: All the masks I make with the help of my friend Cam Finley, who's an amazing fabricator, but I'm super hands on all the design and carving and painting, and he helps me with the technical side of making it so that it doesn't fall apart. My original chain mail costume and fabric I made myself. It fell apart. The chain mail was constantly falling apart, so I finally outsourced it and went to It Is Known, which is a New York City-based shop. She's just an amazing chain mail and scale mail artist. I worked on a design with her, but she made it, and that thing I could go into actual battle with, it is heavy duty.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?
RILEY: It's one of those things that when I'm about to play, I'm not thinking like I'm a girl and I'm about to go play a set. I'm just doing my thing. There was a time in Asheville that we played a show and it was sold out, and it was amazing. Afterwards, a girl came up to me, and she was teary-eyed, and she was like, ‘I love metal. I go to metal shows all the time. It's usually me and two other women in the entire audience.’ And she was like, ‘but tonight half the crowd was women and what you're doing is so important.’ It really moved me, and it woke me up to the fact that representation is important, and I've worked really hard to culminate a space where everyone feels welcome. We have a really diverse audience of all types of people from all walks of life — from old metal head dudes with spike jackets and white beards, to anime girls that aren't metal heads, but they love the costumes and the lore. It's cool to create something where people feel welcome. That's always been the goal of Castle Rat is creating that space.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this next chapter in your career?
RILEY: I like the feeling of potential when you have more things on the horizon and wanting to create more because you can, like having a larger stage. I'm dreaming big, and then I have to figure out the tiny version of the thing that I want to do, because we're playing small stages, and it has to fit in the back of a van and it's the mini Stonehenge. I’m excited that I can have a bigger space so I can go harder when it comes to my vision, which is exciting.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?
RILEY: I'm feeling good. I'm feeling maybe a little overwhelmed with everything that I have to do. The rest of the year is a lot of touring. We're going to do a bunch of festivals in Europe in August, and nothing's announced yet, but there will most likely be a headlining tour later in the year. I moved upstate in July, which was a huge mistake, so I'm moving back to the city as soon as possible. So now I have a move and maybe making a music video and making a 12 foot rat and then touring and rinse and repeat.
