Brooklyn’s Castle Rat return with The Bestiary, a 13-track fantasy heavy metal record built around Riley Pinkerton’s lead vocals and guitar, Franco Vittore’s lead guitar, Charley Ruddell’s bass and Josh Strmic’s drums. The titles read like chapters from a monster book, moving through “Wolf,” “Siren,” “Unicorn,” “Serpent” and “Dragon,” with two “Phoenix” pieces framing the set. It’s a clear extension of the band’s creature-led underground identity, but the music is grounded in traditional heavy metal, doom and stoner rock rather than pure theatrical decoration.
Expect riff-first writing, a weighty rhythm section and guitar parts that give the songs their sword-and-spell character. The album was recorded by Randall Dunn at Applehead Studios and Circular Ruin NYC, then mixed and mastered by Jonathan Nuñez at Sound Artillery Studio, with Castle Rat handling production themselves. That combination should appeal to anyone who likes their doom direct, their metal theatrical and their album art worth studying. It’s released by King Volume Records in North America and Blues Funeral Recordings in the UK and Europe, with paid digital and physical editions including vinyl, CD and cassette. The FLAC release is 16/44.
