Castle Rat on Why Collaboration Made This Record Work

On this episode of The Hardest Part with Kieron Banerji, the band's songwriter and frontwoman opens up "Serpent," the song that fought her hardest on The Bestiary: the one where every band member hated a different part, and the only fix was to scrap everything but the lyrics and start again.

It's a conversation about ego and letting go, the first genuinely collaborative Castle Rat album, tears in the rehearsal space, the heart-to-heart that revealed her bandmates wanted to write too, and the fear that sharing even 10% of a song would void her contribution, sharpened by years of being a woman in metal whose riffs get credited to "the boys." Plus: the "creepies and crawlies" joke that killed the old chorus, a Dio-style rebuild, a 10-foot rat puppet with the wrong wings, and the "Riley filter" through which everything still passes.

00:00 "That's my riff"

01:32 The hardest song on The Bestiary

01:57 Tears in the rehearsal space

03:39 Everyone hated a different part

04:39 Scrap it, keep the lyrics

06:03 "Creepies and crawlies"

09:21 The 10-foot rat puppet

14:09 Being a woman in metal

15:15 The heart-to-heart & Franco's blindside

19:27 Serpent: Full Track