I was sceptical of Castle Rat at first. For an indie band, the marketing seemed just a tad too purposeful and calculated. The band just nailed what makes a classic doom metal fan tick, with the lo-fi VHS style music videos, the hokey image and the sound in general. While the image isn’t always particularly cohesive – the music videos and their retro video qualities scream 80s while the general sound is more indebted to the 70s overall, when the whole knights and fantasy thing wasn’t particularly connected to doom – it is overall very potent at activating the doom part of my brain where ironic and honest enjoyment become indistinguishable from another. The accompanying lore and promotional imagery also do a lot for the bespectacled white guy who spent most of his youth in local game store basements. I don’t like being tricked into liking something, and a marketing campaign and image like this can often feel like I am being sold the sizzle instead of the steak. Surprisingly (and luckily), this is not the case.
Castle Rat play some very solid and characterful doom metal. The Rat Queen clearly shows that she not only knows the ropes of doom, but she avoids the pitfalls of plagiarism with so much ease that I have no doubt that the classics mean a lot to her. The 70s saw metal in its primordial state and it had not yet shed the mannerisms of hard and progressive rock. Songs like the opener “Dagger Dragger” have a pleasant swagger and groove to them and aren’t too preoccupied with the dirge-like crawl that some modern retro doom appropriates. The slower numbers also often capitalize on their slowness by being more emotional. The melancholy of doom ballad “Cry for Me” is particularly noteworthy in this regard, showcasing a slow build not only in dynamics but in an emotional intensity that shines through both the performances and the writing.
Still, Into the Realm is not a flawless album. Similarly to how the image is immensely appealing but not always completely cohesive, cracks show themselves in the details. While the band are very committed to a retro production, with warm saturation throughout, this commitment is broken with how intensely vocal effects are used on Rat Queen‘s main vocals, maybe for a lack of confidence in herselrf as a singer. I think the Rat Queen is a decent singer and certainly good enough for the material. Her vocals recall a doom metal version of Joan Jett or a similar 70s rock singer and her voice is unique enough in doom metal to be a unique selling point. I would lie fi I claimed the immense amounts of reverb and modulation on the vocal track not bother me, though. This is complicated by the fact that the vocals occasionally do clip, which can hardly be excused by the chosen time period and is probably more due to budgetary and/or time constraints. While some elements of the album, particularly in the album flow appear very much of the time period – take the bass solo interlude “Resurrector” and how it adds nothing to the album but dated 70s charm – others are rather anachronistic, like the distortion of the bass. These are kinks that the band can work on for future releases. Or not; as the hokey, silly vibes of the album are admittedly a selling point. A lot of classic underground metal is an acquired taste. Castle Rat remind us of those albums and maybe their flaws are just a level of additional spice.
