metal

Castle Rat

2 festivals played

Brooklyn doom theater — Sabbath-lineage riffs delivered by a costumed cast with the Rat Queen out front.

Castle Rat formed in New York around the songwriting of Riley Pinkerton, who fronts the band as a fantasy character and builds each show around a recurring cast of figures including a Druid, a Rat Reaper and a Plague Doctor. The visual side is closely tied to the music: fuzz-heavy, mid-tempo riffing in the tradition of early British heavy metal, with clean, melodic vocals rather than growls, and lyrics that follow a loose sword-and-sorcery storyline.

The group released its debut album, Into the Realm, in 2024 through King Volume Records. It gathered attention in doom and stoner-metal circles for pairing straightforward, riff-first songwriting with a staged, theatrical presentation, and the band has since built much of its reputation on live performance.