Words by Jon Garcia / photo by Courtney Hall @light_witch

Before Riley Pinkerton was The Rat Queen — the axe-wielding, chainmail brassiere-clad warrior at the helm of Brooklyn metal sensation Castle Rat — she was an awkward child with an over-active imagination that struggled to make friends.

“I've always been making stuff up in my head,” she says. “I live in my imagination. I did that throughout my whole childhood. In elementary school one of the ways I would connect with kids is I would create these games and assign a creature to everyone. Everyone had a power. It was sort of like tag or freeze tag but there's lore to it. It’s just how my brain worked.”

Yet little Riley at recess could’ve never known that same approach would spark the journey of a lifetime as her grown-up self navigated New York City’s doom metal scene.

As a throwaway bit for a Halloween show, she created and assigned costumed roles for her bandmates to wear on stage;  but they had so much fun the costumes never came off. It became the foundation for Castle Rat’s sonic sorcery and stage show that’s lit up the underground metal scene and gone viral across social media.

Pinkerton and her bandmates – guitarist Franco Vittore (The Count), drummer Joshua Strmic (The Druid), bassist Charley Ruddell (The Plague Doctor) and performer Madeline Wright (The Rat Reaperess) – transport audiences to their fantastic realm through the powerful riffing of doom and heavy metal.

“Castle Rat has been a way to literally dig back into my childhood and do the exact same thing I was doing on the playground in a way that feels really genuine and authentic to my inner child, which is a really beautiful thing.”

Becoming a Frazetta’s Girl

The biggest impetus for paving the treacherous path to the gates of Castle Rat was Pinkerton’s discovery of painter Frank Frazetta. Known as the Godfather of Fantasy Art, his work graced canvases, comic books, movie posters, album covers and more.

But it’s his otherworldly paintings – featuring muscular heroes, feminine warriors, terrifying beasts and mystical landscapes – that captured imaginations across generations. He set the modern standard for what pop culture imagines as fantasy, and his influence still reaches artists today.

“There was just something so intoxicating about his whole world,” Pinkerton says. “When you look at the paintings, it's up to your own interpretation of what's going on in that scene. The way he leaves the edges pretty hazy that your mind can fill in the rest. It's just so expressive and emotive, and that's something I really aim to capture with Castle Rat.”

Even more so than the fantasy subject matter, though, was the way he portrayed women amongst the hypermasculinity of the men. Rather than impossibly buxomed babes contorting their bodies in severe angles, Pinkerton found inspiration by how real the women felt in his paintings.

“I like that he depicts softness and femininity, and then also strength and power,” she says. “The context of a lot of the paintings is important. He exaggerates the female form but he still does it in a believable way.”

 

One of Frazetta’s paintings that adorns her wall at home is called “Sun Goddess”. It showcases a mostly-naked woman standing next to a sabretoothed beast, her arms wide and head back as if calling to the heavens.

“The skin under her arms sags in a very real, human way,” Pinkerton says. “She's got a bit of a belly, and it's beautiful. It's just this acceptance of the sun and your body in nature. He captures women in a lot of different ways. There's other depictions where it's women with dimpled thighs or cellulite. It's those details of reality, instead of airbrushing or overly polishing it.

“He just kind of reframed my mind with what my own ideal for myself could be. I found it really empowering, and that was something that I felt was really important to bring to Castle Rat. To sort of step into this persona that felt very confident in her body and womanhood.”

Pinkerton says she’s very much not that kind of person in real life. She struggles with confidence, self-image and body positivity. But as the Rat Queen she can embody a warrior goddess; not only to give herself power but to share it with others as well.

“My costume doesn't cover a lot. I don't wear nylons or hose or anything, so I have cellulite and it comes out in photos. Having that reference point of Frazetta sort of gives me this thing to point to where I'm like, ‘It's okay that my body looks like that. And not only is it okay, but it's sexy and powerful.’ So, yeah, that meant a lot to me to dig into his works.”

Embodying their on-stage personas

She’s not the only one that has been able to step into her authenticity. Her bandmates' own personalities and idiosyncrasies have blended with their on-stage selves as well, something Pinkerton finds amusing.

“We laugh about how much their personalities are reflected in the characters, which is funny because both Franco and Charlie stepped into these roles. It wasn't like I built these characters for these people.”

Vittore embodies the mysterious Count, preferring to shred guitar in his dark crypt rather than venture out into the world or the sun. Strmic, the Druid, is drawn to nature and Ruddell, the masked and cloaked Plague Doctor, takes care of both band and business behind the scenes with a layer of mystery. It became most apparent during their time in upstate New York recording their second album, The Bestiary.

“Franco was up in an attic, which is where he was staying on the property. Josh was out tromping through the woods in the snow and ice, and then Charlie making business calls and stuff,” Pinkerton says. She’d often have to go out and look for their drummer outside to let him know it was time to track.

The entire journey has been a new experience for everyone, and it’s brought them closer together as they figure out how to build this metaphorical airplane as it's hurtling down the runway.

“We're all growing a lot because the band is growing,” she says. “None of us have been a part of anything [like this before]. It's so much to navigate, but they're all my best friends. The good thing is we're just full of laughs. The tour van is just us cackling all the time because we just have so much fun together. We're all straight faced on stage because we're playing the parts, but Castle Rat is a lot of fun.”

However, Pinkerton admits it took time to truly open her imaginative world to her bandmates. She struggled at first to cede any creative control because she’d so long just done everything on her own.

“I'm so glad that we pushed through that hurdle, which was my hurdle of learning to accept influence from my extremely talented bandmates,” she says. “I had to get out of my own way for sure. My favorite songs on the album are the most collaborative ones, they're the most fun to play live. I look forward to collaborating more heavily on the third album. We have to serve the music and not my ego.”

She’s also open about her gender playing a role in her reluctance to accept help.

“Because I'm a girl, there's been so many times that I've gotten off stage and some dude is like, ‘Those guys write some heavy riffs!’ And I'm like, ‘Bitch! I wrote all those!’ That's so frustrating! That's the part of me that doesn’t want to give up control. I want to be able to say I did all that because people are just going to inherently doubt — or it’s not going to cross their minds — that I would be the one writing stuff just because I’m a girl.

“But you know, I think that as this grows more I can sit into the fact that I've started something that's larger than myself and means something to more than just me. When something gets big you need extra hands to carry it. So I try to appreciate the people around me that want to invest their time and energy into this thing and make it the best that it can be.”

Hitting the road with titans of over-the-top spectacle

Currently, the band is preparing for their biggest opportunity yet: In April, Castle Rat is a special guest on The Amonlok Conquest Tour, where they’ll join Amon Amarth and Dethklok for a 22-city tour across North America.

The two metal titans are no stranger to their own form of theatrical, on-stage madness, and Pinkerton is stoked to be able to up the ante for their own production.

“We can bring more firepower in terms of props,” she says. “I'm building a giant Castle Rat that is essentially going to be a backpack puppet. It'll be 12-feet tall. That's what I'm gonna spend the next couple months doing.”

She’s also fashioning castle walls out of EVA foam and fastening them with DIY lanterns, all in the name of making the fantasy an immersive experience for everyone in the audience.

“My feeling is that it's really important to limit projections or animated stuff and keep everything as tangible as possible,” she says. “It's just going to have a totally different impact of seeing someone come out in this fucking 12-foot rat costume. People will be stoked. I’ll be stoked!

“There's just this certain magic to seeing something that's real-not-real,” she continues. “It's kind of the whole angle of Castle Rat. I'm gonna be a Frazetta Girl, but I'm not gonna hire an artist to paint me on the album cover. It's gonna be a photo, because it's real-not-real. It's a thing that you can reach out and touch. I feel like that’s such an important aspect to Castle Rat and the whole aesthetic and experience.”

 

It’s been that way since the beginning when the band’s costumes were made out of paper mache and tablecloths, complemented by hockey sticks with tin foil and cardboard. Pinkerton loves making things and giving the audience the unexpected, but mainly she wants the audience to be able to lose themselves in their own fantasy as well.

“By doing the big theatrical stuff on stage and committing to the bit, I feel like it always raises the weirdness ceiling so that everyone in the audience can feel more free to show up in whatever fashion.”

She says her time in New York City has taught her that you’re never going to be the weirdest person on the street, and she tries to bring that ethos to Castle Rat so people feel comfortable at the shows.

“The community of the audience is really important to me, and ensuring that everyone feels welcome and that they can step into this universe and be themselves  — or someone else if they want, dressing up is encouraged — that's always a message that I want to put forward: everyone is welcome.”

They’ll get the chance to add to their legions on the Amonklok Tour. Swaths of headbangers, green and gray, will be introduced to the Rat Queen and no doubt will hear the call to pick up a sword and rally for Castle Rat.

“I'm looking forward to the future,” Pinkerton says. “I want to push the envelope musically. With LP three I really want to kick the door down and just do whatever we want because Castle Rat is its own universe.

“Not that I've started writing it,” she smirks.

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Experience Castle Rat live on the Amonklok Conquest Tour. The run begins next month and will feature the co-headlining tandem of Amon Amarth and Dethklok along with Castle Rat serving as special guests. See the complete list of dates and cities below. Get tickets - HERE