The Rat Queen steps up to the mic in a chain-mail bra, Gibson SG in hand, her fiery red hair catching the spotlight. Beside her is a vampiric guitarist, a bassist with a plague doctor’s beak mask and a druid pounding the drums like a war march. Behold Castle Rat.
They rip into a tirade of trad-metal riffs — somewhere between Black Sabbath’s doom, Electric Wizard’s fuzzed-out menace and the Sword’s stoner gallop. The scene feels like a Frank Frazetta painting come to life. It’s medieval fantasy heavy metal mixed with Seventies-era stage theatrics. And it’s the realest Riley Pinkerton — the Rat Queen herself — has ever felt.
“There’s a lot of fantasy, costumes and DIY crafting in this band,” says the vocalist-guitarist. “But what’s funny: It’s helped me become the most authentic version of myself.”
Since 2019, New York City’s Castle Rat have been building their own metal mythos — and a fast-growing audience. Their 2024 album, Into the Realm, has racked up over one million Spotify streams. They’ve shared bills with Monolord, Acid King and more, and played stages at Desertfest, Hellfest and Copenhell.
“The MO of this band has always been having this great sense of ambition,” says Pinkerton. “Then realizing, ‘Oh shit, can we actually pull this off?’”
So far, they’ve nailed it. In early 2025, Castle Rat launched a Kickstarter to fund their second album, The Bestiary. They hit their goal in 37 minutes — becoming the most successful metal Kickstarter in over a decade. The achievement enabled them to book studio time with Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Pallbearer) and cut their most fully realized songs to date.
The Bestiary is primed to take Castle Rat to the next level. Beyond writing infectious new songs such as the dark psych workout “WOLF I” and retro-stoner jam “WIZARD,” they’ve upgraded their looks and worked with a choreographer to ramp up the onstage battle scenes. These moments further the mythos of Pinkerton’s heroic Rat Queen and her allies — the Count (guitarist Franco Vittore), the Plague Doctor (bassist Charley Ruddell) and the All-Seeing Druid (drummer Joshua Strmic) — as they protect the realm from the scythe-wielding Rat Reaperess (Maddy Wright). And yes, these battles play out live every night.
But they’re not the first ones Pinkerton’s had to fight. To get here, she had to overcome a much less fantastical but more dangerous foe: self-doubt.
Raised in the Michigan countryside, Pinkerton spent years as a solo folk artist inspired by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. She was also a secret metalhead obsessed with Sabbath, Zeppelin and Nirvana, and drawn to the dark pull of Nick Cave and Jeff Buckley’s guitar histrionics. But she didn’t think a “softly spoken” woman had the right to shred: “I did folk because that’s what I thought I was capable of, but it always felt strange.”
Pinkerton was just as lost when she moved to New York, until watching a scrappy basement gig by her friends in Reverend Mother snapped things into focus. “I realized you can do your own version of the thing you love,” she says. The guitarist went home, grabbed her SG and started writing the first Castle Rat songs, swapping wistful folk for a riff-heavy sound.
Something clicked, and she soon assembled a group of like-minded metalheads to bring those songs to life. Live shows soon followed. Castle Rat’s third-ever gig happened to fall on Halloween, and Pinkerton suggested they dress up. The band agreed. But she went further, giving everyone a character to play.
“I found a children’s medieval princess dress in a thrift store and cut it short to make it more rock & roll,” she explains of the Rat Queen’s origins. “It was a bit of an accident. I’m not some theater kid who was dying to get onstage in costume, but it was so liberating stepping into this character. The gig was so much fun that we figured, why not have Halloween every night?”
Castle Rat were a little worried the band might be dismissed as a gimmick, but felt secure knowing “the music has always come first.”
Their menacing songs are set in a fantastical world where the Rat Queen goes up against her archnemesis, the Rat Reaperess. But they more broadly talk of strength and perseverance: things everyone can relate to. For Pinkerton, embracing the theatrical world and celebrating “strength in femininity” wasn’t just a way to make their shows even more of a spectacle — it became a way to reclaim her own sense of power, a feeling she first recognized years earlier after discovering the work of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.
“Growing up, I struggled with what my body looked like. I starved myself to look like what I saw in air-brushed ads,” she says. “Seeing Frank Frazetta paintings in my early twenties was the first time I’d seen women who were strong but still soft, feminine and curvy. It made me realize I had value. I know people enjoy the aesthetic of Castle Rat and it’s really fun — but it also means a lot to me.”
With the Rat Queen crown firmly on Pinkerton’s head, there’s nothing left to hold Castle Rat back. “I’ve always been ambitious about music, but felt so limited by how I could do it,” she says. “Because of all the barriers I’ve pushed through to get here, my attitude now is why not try and go all the way?”
The response to the band has only fueled their drive. “Fantasy is important because you can see this hero’s journey and take that strength into your own life,” Pinkerton says of the die-hard fanbase they’ve inspired, adding, “And if people relate, I hope it makes them feel less alone.”
“The grander purpose of Castle Rat is creating a space where people feel welcomed, safe and included,” she says. “If we create a spectacle onstage with our camp theatrics, it takes the pressure off everyone in the audience. I want people to feel free to live out whatever version of themselves they want to be.”