“I want to ride a unicorn every night”: heavy metal band Castle Rat | metal

WAlthough many rock singers have risen from high fantasy, few have truly gone down the road. Sure, they may adorn their album sleeves with ghouls, orcs, bound maidens, and powerful barbarians, but has a member of Cirith Ungol ever had to retrieve a lost unicorn horn from a snowy field in the depths of winter? Has Yngwie Malmsteen ever spent time staring at the back of a tour bus, fixing his email?

Founded in Brooklyn in 2019, Castle Rat had to face both scenarios and more while living out their epic fantasies. From their energetic slogan anthems to their dazzling live performances, costume design, videos and album art, it’s not so much a band as it is a complete immersive experience.

“Castle Rat was never meant to be a costume band,” says singer, guitarist, swordsman and creative leader Riley Pinkerton, as the band’s tour bus zips from a sold-out gig in Cologne to another in Aschaffenburg – they also play five UK gigs this week. “We played two shows and got booked for a Halloween party, where I made a last-minute decision to dress up. It was all great, but we had a lot of fun and the feeling in the room was lively. I thought, ‘What if we could have this much fun every time?'”

Since then, the band, which features Pinkerton as the “Rat Queen” alongside a plague doctor (Charlie Ruddell, bass), an arrogant vampire (Franco Vettori, guitar) and a mysterious priest (Joshua Stermek, drummer), hasn’t looked back since. The Bestiary, the band’s second album, conjures visions of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Manowar teaming up to fight their way through the fantasy world of Frank Frazetta – a heroic act that puts them on the brink of far greater things.

The Bestiary was a first for Pinkerton as she opened the door for her bandmates. “It made it a lot stronger,” she says of the collaborative process. “I struggled at first – I always felt a certain amount of pride in being a woman in the music business on her own. There have been so many times I’ve walked off stage and someone will say to me, ‘These guys write great riffs!’ and I’m like, ‘Hey –’” I He wrote it all down.”

As the band’s stature grew, so did the scope of their production design. “My motto is always if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing morePinkerton laughs. She was originally going to get a degree in fine arts before backing out at the prospect of taking on too much debt. “The fun thing about Castle Rat is that there are so many different ways to apply artistic expression,” she says. Whether it’s making masks, designing costumes, learning how to edit music videos…it’s all things I don’t know how to do, but it’s fun to figure it out quickly.”

As if constructing the band’s elaborate lore (“Everyone’s telling me to write it down because it’s all here) and sewing outfits wasn’t enough, the singer taught herself how to make chain mail — no mean feat, though she left her brand-new look to a New York-based specialist,” says Riley, nodding, nodding off. shield“, she beams.

As for the fans? They tackled the fake blood, foam swords and paper rat skulls with as much enthusiasm as the band. “We did a show in Detroit and it looked like a Renaissance fair,” Reilly recalls fondly. “Everyone was wearing cloaks, sheepskin, and chain mail.”

However, that didn’t mean that life on the road as vagabonds with sword and magic was easy. “Everything is constantly breaking and ending up taped together,” says Riley. “Plus, I’ll have endless ideas about what I want things to look like, but we’re traveling in a truck that only has so much room. It’s an interesting challenge to make it feel like a larger-than-life story, and then put it together into nothing.”

There were other logistical problems that Conan the Cimmerian or Dark Agnes de Chastillon would not have had. “We had an ‘Oh my God’ moment when we played the SonicBlast Festival in Portugal and my luggage — which had my sword in it — got lost,” says Riley. “That was the worst case scenario, because there’s no alternate version of the show where I don’t have a sword.”

Like a true warrior queen, Riley is excited about the future. “I want to go all the way, let’s build playgrounds,” she says. “The one thing that’s really important to me is keeping the DIY aesthetic, and making sure everything is handcrafted. That’s an element I want to keep true, no matter how big we go. Oh, and I want to ride a unicorn every night. You know how Rob Halford does the motorcycle thing? That, but with a unicorn.”