Written by Castle Rat’s Riley Pinkerton has called allegations of the fantasy doom metal band being “industry plants” “hilarious”.
Talking to Full Metal Jackie (via Loudwire), the singer/guitarist, who performs onstage as her alter ego “The Rat Queen”, responds to the notion of the fast-rising four-piece somehow being backed by music industry elites, despite the fact that they had to finance their last album, 2025’s The Bestiary, via a crowd-funding initiative.
“I don’t go on Reddit or anything, but my bandmates do. And so I hear reports back of people being like, ‘They’re industry plants,’ which is hilarious and a compliment,” she says.
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“I’m like, damn, we’re doing all this super DIY and you think that we’re industry plants. That’s the funniest comeback, because other people will chime in and they’ll be like, ‘Who would plant a mediaeval rodent-themed doom metal band in the industry and be like, “You know what’s really gonna make us money? This rodent-themed mediaeval doom metal band.”’”
Pinkerton also looks back on the crowd-sourcing that made The Bestiary possible, revealing that Castle Rat hit their target in just 37 minutes.
“And then we still had a whole month to raise more money,” she recalls. “That level of support was just baffling and it puts a certain amount of pressure on you, where, ‘Oh, people really care. They really want another album.’
“So we’re feeling like, OK, we really have to deliver. We would’ve put pressure on ourselves no matter what. But it has a different flavour when people are backing you like that. Castle Rat’s been such a DIY grassroots thing, which is funny.”
Pinkerton co-founded Castle Rat in 2019. The band’s shows build their own mythology where Pinkerton battles the Rat Reaperess, dies and resurrects herself. Talking to Metal Hammer earlier this year, the singer/guitarist revealed that the narrative was a metaphor for her own struggles with death anxiety.
“I go onstage, I battle death, I die, and I come back to life – because I don’t want to die,” she explained. “It’s funny, because I didn’t set out to make a show about my death anxiety. I was like, ‘I think it’d be cool if I die and spit up blood and yada yada yada – but I have to come back to life because I still need to play another show the next night.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, this is entirely about that.’”
The Bestiary received critical acclaim upon its release in September and made it to number three on Hammer’s list of the best albums of the year.
The band are currently touring North America as a support act for Dethklok and Amon Amarth and will hit the European festival circuit in the summer. UK fans will be able to catch them at Bloodstock Open Air in Derbyshire in August.
