‘Every Night, I Dream of Riding a Unicorn’: Medieval Metal Group Castle Rat

While plenty of musicians have borrowed from fantasy lore, rarely any have fully embraced the fantasy lifestyle. Admittedly, they may decorate their album covers with creatures, beasts, chained damsels and muscular warriors, but has any musician ever been forced to recover a lost horn from a unicorn from a snowy field in the midst of winter? Has anyone spent time straining their eyes in the rear of a tour bus, repairing their own metal mesh?

Living the Fantasy

Established in 2019, Brooklyn’s Castle Rat have had to face such situations and more as they live out their grand tales. Starting with heraldic, earworm-heavy anthems to eye-popping live shows, costume design, videos and cover artwork, they’re not so much a rock act as a total artistic immersion.

“Castle Rat wasn’t meant to be a outfit with characters,” explains vocalist, guitar player, sword-carrier and visionary Riley Pinkerton as the band’s tour van speeds from a sold-out gig in a German city to another in Aschaffenburg – they are playing five gigs in the UK now. “We played two shows and were scheduled on a spooky event, where I decided spontaneously to wear a costume. It was all highly handmade, but we had an amazing time and the feeling in the room was incredible. I realized, ‘Imagine if we could have so much excitement always?’”

Growth of the Group

Since then, the band – which includes Pinkerton as the “Rat Queen” alongside a plague doctor (bass player), proud bloodsucker (lead guitarist) and secretive shaman (rhythm keeper) – continued forward. Their latest album, the group’s sophomore release, evokes images of legendary heavy bands collaborating to battle their way through a Frank Frazetta fantasy world – a epic masterpiece that sets them on the edge of far grander things.

This album was a first for Pinkerton in that she invited input to her collaborators. “That contributed to a much better record,” she says of the team effort. “I struggled at first – I’d always felt a certain amount of pride being a woman in music going it alone. There’ve been numerous occasions where I finished performing and an audience member will say, ‘Those guys write great riffs!’ and I think, ‘Listen – I wrote all that.’”

Artistry and Imagination

As their fame has grown, so has the scope of their visual elements. “My philosophy is always that if an effort matters, it’s worth overdoing,” Pinkerton laughs. She was originally on track for a university studies in art before pulling back at the possibility of financial burden. “The exciting part about Castle Rat is there’s so many different ways to demonstrate creativity,” she says. “Be it making masks, attire creation, figuring out video editing music videos … it’s all stuff I don’t know how to do, but it’s exciting to discover as we go.”

Even though building the ensemble’s complex backstory (“Everyone’s urging me to document it because everything is stored,” Riley says, tapping her head) and making clothing didn’t suffice, the singer learned on her own how to make chainmail – a challenging endeavor, though she confessedly left her all-new scale armor design to a New York-based specialist. “It seems like actual armour,” she beams.

Audience Reaction and Challenges

As for audiences? They took to the fake blood, foam swords and crafted rodent bones with equal enthusiasm as the group. “We played a concert in the Motor City and it looked like a Renaissance fair,” remembers Riley with affection. “Everyone was in cloaks, sheepskin, chainmail.”

However, this doesn’t mean, however, that traveling lifestyle as fantasy adventurers has been smooth. “Everything is always failing and gets fixed temporarily,” Riley says. “Moreover I come up with numerous thoughts as to how I desire the presentation, but we’re traveling in a bus with restricted capacity. It’s a unique problem to create the impression like a larger-than-life story, then store it into a small space.”

We’ve encountered other logistical problems that would never have plagued mythic characters. “We did have an ‘disastrous’ moment when we appeared at a music event in Portugal and my baggage – which had my blade in it – got lost,” says Riley. “This became a worst-case scenario, because there is no an different option of the performance where I lack a sword.”

Upcoming Plans

Like a true warrior queen, Riley is gung-ho about the future. “My goal is to the top – let’s do stadiums,” she says. “The main aspect that’s truly essential to me is preserving the self-crafted look, ensuring everything is custom-made. It’s a component I want to remain faithful to, no matter what we grow into. Plus, I want to ride out on a mythical beast each show. You know how famous musicians do the motorcycle thing? Exactly that, but with a unicorn.”