There’s something oddly comforting about finding yourself completely caught off guard. I’ve heard about how awesome Castle Rat were through the grapevines. I heard the buzz, caught a few hypnotic snippets online, enough to know there were cloaks and swords involved. But nothing that could’ve warned me when I saw them live that I’d step into a world where doom riffs feel like ancient scripture and fantasy tropes are delivered with the intensity of a religious rite.
And yet here I am, a few months later, bowing before “The Bestiary”.
It would’ve been easy to dismiss Castle Rat at first glance. The costumes, the stage names, the medieval myth-making could all feel like a gimmick in lesser hands. I don’t have to name names, the press is full of them these days, especially if you still follow the power metal scene – where it seems every band has to have a gimmick.
But the thing about Castle Rat is that they believe. Their vision is so fully realized, so meticulously embodied, that you don’t feel like you’re watching a band play doom metal dressed like a LARP guild. You feel like you’ve wandered into some forgotten pocket of the multiverse where God’s name is Frank Frazetta.
And even if they dropped all that: if the costumes and theatrics were thrown away, you’d still have the music. And that would still be enough to transport you to this world.
“The Bestiary” doesn’t just nod at retro-doom; it lives and breathes it. The riffs are thick and deliberate, the production feels analog without sounding muddy, and most importantly, it never feels forced. In a world stuffed with sterile, over-compressed metal records trying to out-shock each other into virality, Castle Rat have chosen depth over volume and storytelling over spectacle.
You want proof? Let’s talk about “Serpent,” a track that seduces you with a slithering, exotic chorus. Or “Wizard,” which chain casts, throwing hook after hook until you’re mesmerized, humming along without realizing it.
On the other hands, tracks like Wolf II” show the band at their most emotionally vulnerable, with a vocal performance that carries the entire weight of the song’s atmosphere like a blade through fog. And then there’s “Sun Song,” a slow-burning, cathedral-sized hymn that deserves to be carved into the altar of epic doom
We live in an era of fast-burning mythology. You can slap on a mask, name your band something vaguely ominous, and get 500k views before lunch. There are groups (cough President cough) that have done just that, surfing the wave left behind by Ghost or Sleep Token, packaging aesthetics and mystery like a TikTok product drop. But the truth always comes out in the music. The punchline? It’s not enough to have a gimmick. You have to stand behind it.
Time will tell which of these bands will etch their name into the stone, and which will flicker past in the endless scroll. But right now, “The Bestiary” feels like more than a moment. It’s a map. A doorway. A second chapter in a story you’ll want to follow until the torches go out.
And if the next chapters are anything like this one, we’ll be telling these tales for years.
