Castle Rat : Serpent Review

By Shannon Smith

From the opening drum roll, Castle Rat’s “Serpent” coils itself around the listener with the kind of vintage-metal authority that is hard to resist. Recorded under the steady hand of Randall Dunn and mixed by Jonathan Nuñez, the track bears all the marks of a band intent on situating itself within the heavy metal continuum while pushing its theatrical boundaries forward.

The Rat Queen (Riley Pinkerton) anchors the performance with a vocal delivery that channels the urgency of early NWOBHM and the gothic charisma of proto-doom. Her voice is commanding with a full-bodied timbre that is serrated at the edges. The vocals have harmonies and are doubled in just the right moments to heighten the incantatory quality of the lyric. This is not a detached narration of serpent mythology but a vivid embodiment of it: sympathetic, dangerous, seductive.

 “Serpent” has a strong song form that refreshes familiar tropes. The twin-guitar attack creates a crunching wall that is less blunt force than it is sculpted relief. The chords and riffs interact to create a melodic figure that bites. The mid-song interlude, built on harmonized guitar lines, provides a build-up and anticipation before it detonates into a shred-inspired guitar solo. It’s here that Castle Rat demonstrates their technical agility: the harmonization isn’t gratuitous, but structural, setting up the solo as both climax and commentary on the song’s thematic duality of temptation and tragedy.

The rhythm section holds the line with a conviction that turns the track’s tempo into a body-moving force. Bass and drums are locked, allowing the guitar textures to thread their eerie elegance into the soundscape. These mood-enhancing shades are subtle but essential, a spectral aura around the otherwise steel-and-fire core. They frame the serpent as a mythic figure shimmering with misunderstood nobility.

Taken as a preview of The Bestiary, Castle Rat’s sophomore album, “Serpent,” is the last single before its drop. It introduces a beast and a worldview where riffs as lore, drums and bass are spells, and a voice is a blade. Where so many modern metal acts retreat into genre pastiche, Castle Rat double down on world-building, theatrics, and symbolic weight. In doing so, they achieve something that is ancient and immediate.

In “Serpent,” Castle Rat has written the serpent’s side of the story, and it slithers with tragic grace, sharpened steel, and a pulse that dares both the headbanger and the mystic to move.