Riley Pinkerton’s preparations for Castle Rat’s latest tour included a unicorn, a dragon, a serpent, and a wizard mask. Getting them out of her head and onto a stage required some professional help.
“I can dream big,” she tells Montreal Rocks. “And then I got to make something and it falls apart.”
Working with a fabricator friend allows Pinkerton to remain involved in the construction without having to solve every practical problem herself.
“I get in with the hot glue gun and the paint and the Dremel, and we make it happen.”
Pinkerton performs as the Rat Queen, leading the New York fantasy-doom band through a fictional world populated by allies, beasts, and a recurring embodiment of Death called the Rat Reaperess. There are costumes and choreographed battles. Someone has to build the things that get summoned.
The mythology is Pinkerton’s creation. Asked who came up with it, she answers immediately: “Me! It’s me.”
Then she catches herself.
“Yeah, nobody else does anything to help. Just kidding. I get a lot of help. I’ve learned to allow help.”
Castle Rat first presented that world on its 2024 debut, Into the Realm, and expanded it with last year’s The Bestiary, both released through King Volume Records. The second album gave Pinkerton a useful writing constraint: a book of beasts, with different creatures supplying the starting points for songs. An overarching plot could wait.
“I didn’t have the overarching story planned out in advance,” she says. “I just tackled each song.”
Once the album was finished, she could work out what connected its inhabitants and how to tell that story in performance. Trying to resolve all of it while writing would have added another job to an already demanding process.
“It’s really important to me that the music leads,” she says. “The music informs everything else because, at the end of the day, we’re a band.”
The Rat Queen gives Castle Rat a striking visual identity, but Pinkerton writes before she starts figuring out how to stage the next confrontation. The songs do not have to arrive with their blocking attached.
Besides, she has left herself plenty of room to explain any unexpected development.
“That’s the beauty of making up your own universe with its own rules and time travel and interdimensional travel,” she says. “You can really get away with anything.”
Speaking before the tour began, Pinkerton outlined a Summon the Beasts production that would bring more of The Bestiary onto the stage. The creatures were to be summoned by a wizard, with a second stage performer allowing characters to appear together.
Previously, one performer handled the Rat Reaperess and changed costumes when another character was needed. Having two people available opens up the final battle.
“We can now have two characters on stage at the same time,” Pinkerton says. “The battle scene at the end is going to be layered.”
She qualifies the plans as she describes them. Things can change. A creature imagined on a record still has to survive being fabricated, transported, and performed with.
There is also more history behind these characters than a concert can reasonably accommodate. Pinkerton says some of that material has been in place for six or seven years. She wants to get it written down so listeners can spend more time with it.
“I’m meeting with a comic book writer soon,” she says. “That’s definitely an ideal medium, aside from a movie.”
A comic remains a possibility rather than an announced release. Pinkerton is interested in giving the existing characters more backstory before deciding where else to take them.
“I’m just making it all up as I go, so I can expand it in any direction from there.”
Other people have already started making their own contributions. Castle Rat’s audience includes artists who send the band drawings and interpretations of its characters. For Pinkerton, seeing someone else spend time inside a world she invented is one of the more rewarding consequences of the band’s growing following.
“We’re following our creative vision, and then the fact that that’s inspiring other artists to create is such a special thing,” she says.
Some fans have made their attachment permanent. Pinkerton has seen a large Rat Queen tattoo on a forearm. Signatures she has left on people’s arms and legs have subsequently been tattooed into place.
“That’s the level of, like, ‘Whoa, that’s a dedicated fan.’”
Meeting that audience has become a more complicated part of touring. Castle Rat has generally gone to the merchandise table after shows to speak with people. Pinkerton likes doing it and does not want to stop entirely. On a longer run, though, the conversations take a toll.
For this tour, the band has added a structured VIP soundcheck session, with a limited group admitted before the show. It includes two songs, a Q&A, signings, and early access to merchandise.
Fans will meet the musicians in their everyday clothes. The Rat Reaperess is planned to appear in costume for photographs.
“It’s a little peek-behind-the-veil situation,” she says.
Appearing as the characters at soundcheck would mean staying in makeup and costume for roughly six hours. Pinkerton invokes “everyone’s sanity” when explaining why that arrangement was rejected.
The tour reaches Montreal’s Theatre Beanfield on Monday, October 19, 2026, with Unto Others and dungeon-synth artist Wraith Knight. It gives Castle Rat a headlining set in which to develop the production Pinkerton had been planning before the run began.
She hopes there will still be evenings when the band can come out after the performance. She is also learning when to call it a night.
“It feels so silly to be like, ‘Oh, this job is hard.’ It’s like the best job in the universe,” she says. “But literally, for the sake of my voice, when I go out at the end and you’re shouting over loud music, I’m toast after a few nights in a row of that.”
“I have to be mindful of my energy and my health.”
Castle Rat plays Theatre Beanfield on 19 October with Unto Others and Wraith Knight.
Watch the full interview below:
Photo Credits: Courtney Hall & Ryan Rumpel
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