Castle Rat's Riley Pinkerton: Long Live the Rat Queen, Forever in Her Realm

Riley Pinkerton doesn't just front Castle Rat — she is the Rat Queen. Songwriter, guitarist, costume-maker, prop-builder, and self-appointed monarch of a medieval doom metal kingdom of her own design, Pinkerton has spent the last several years turning a Brooklyn doom band into one of the most theatrical and beloved acts in underground heavy music.

Castle Rat formed in 2019 and found their identity almost by accident, when a Halloween show at Saint Vitus turned into a full-blown costumed spectacle: Pinkerton as the Rat Queen, flanked by The Count, The Plague Doctor, and The Druid, doing battle onstage with the dreaded Rat Reaperess. The bit stuck. What followed was a fully realized fantasy world built on Sabbath-heavy riffs, Frazetta-painting visuals, and lore dense enough to include interdimensional time travel.

Their 2024 debut Into the Realm introduced the kingdom. Their 2025 follow-up The Bestiary — crowdfunded to its goal in 37 minutes — expanded it into a sprawling book of beasts, each track a creature, each creature a chapter. Beneath the swords and smoke, the show is secretly about something deeply human: Pinkerton's own death anxiety, exorcised nightly through a ritual in which the Queen dies and rises again, chanting "Now is forever in this realm" with the crowd.

In 2026, Castle Rat are touring North America with Dethklok and Amon Amarth, headed for Sonic Temple and Bloodstock Open Air, and quietly building a 12-foot rat puppet for the next chapter. Industry plant rumors aside — and Pinkerton finds them hilarious — Castle Rat remains stubbornly, gloriously DIY. Long live the Rat Queen.