Tickets go on sale at 10am BST on Friday 2nd October, as Castle Rat continue to expand their increasingly ambitious live world following a rapid rise that has taken them from the underground to major festivals and some of the biggest stages of their career.

Castle Rat

Castle Rat (Jonathan Pushnik)

The announcement arrives as the band continue their Summon The Beasts Tour 2026, their biggest headline tour so far. The current North American run follows an extensive touring period that has seen Castle Rat perform alongside Amon Amarth and Dethklok, as well as headline shows and major festival appearances.

The band’s spectacular live presence has become as important to their identity as the music itself. Built around swords, sorcery, monsters, theatrical costumes and a deliberately constructed fantasy mythology, Castle Rat turn every performance into something approaching a heavy metal role-playing adventure.

At the centre of that world is Riley Pinkerton, known as The Rat Queen, who handles lead vocals and rhythm guitar. She is joined by Franco Vittore, The Count, on lead guitar and backing vocals; Charley Ruddell, The Plague Doctor, on bass; and Josh Strmic, The All-Seeing Druid, on drums.

Together, the quartet face their recurring nemesis, Death, Herself — The Rat Reaperess — as the band continues to develop the visual mythology surrounding its music.

The theatrical presentation is matched by a sound deeply rooted in heavy metal’s darker traditions. Castle Rat combine doom-heavy riffs, fuzzed-out guitar textures, stoner-metal momentum and classic heavy-metal theatrics, creating music that feels deliberately larger than the individual songs.

The band’s most recent album, The Bestiary, pushed that approach further. Produced by Randall Dunn, the album followed their 2024 debut Into The Realm and established a more expansive version of the band’s sound.

Released in late 2025, The Bestiary helped propel Castle Rat into a new level of international attention, building on the foundation established by Into The Realm, which has now accumulated 10 million Spotify streams and reached the top of Bandcamp’s Best-Selling Hard Rock/Alt Rock Albums chart upon release.

The band’s rise has been accompanied by an increasingly demanding touring schedule. Following two sold-out tours in late 2024, Castle Rat embarked on a headline US tour in March 2025 before spending six weeks touring Europe, including appearances at Desertfest, Hellfest and Copenhell. The group subsequently joined Amon Amarth and Dethklok for a major run before launching their current North American headline tour.

This year alone, the band have performed in front of approximately 75,000 people across headline shows, major rock festivals and their touring commitments, culminating in a sold-out 1,400-capacity headline show in Anaheim. They also made a major impression at the UK’s Bloodstock festival, further strengthening their connection with British metal audiences.

The next step will be considerably more intimate than the largest festival stages but significant in its own way: a headline appearance at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. The 27th May 2027 show represents the biggest London headline date of Castle Rat’s career so far, giving UK fans another opportunity to enter the band’s increasingly elaborate realm of riffs, ritualistic imagery and theatrical heavy metal.

The London announcement also arrives alongside the release of the recent Dragon video, providing another visual introduction to the world that Castle Rat have built around The Bestiary and their live performances.

For listeners drawn to doom, stoner metal and classic heavy metal — and anyone looking for something considerably more theatrical than a conventional gig — Castle Rat continue to make the stage an extension of their music.

With their largest London headline show now confirmed, the Rat Queen and her fellow warriors are preparing to return to the UK in 2027 and summon a new chapter in the band’s rapidly expanding world.

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The 27-year-old Austin native has spent the past three years building an international audience around a distinctive blend of Americana, Texas Country and Red Dirt influences, with songwriting rooted in his Southern upbringing. Ramblin’ marks a new chapter in that story, turning away from the upheaval and relentless movement of his breakthrough years and towards the familiarity of home.

Dylan Gossett

Dylan Gossett (Harrison Hargrave)

If 2025 debut album Westward captured the dramatic change that came with Gossett’s rapid rise and life on the road, Ramblin’ reflects what happens when the touring finally pauses and there is time to reconnect with the people and places left behind.

For Gossett, that makes the album feel like a homecoming. “Where Westward is all about this change of life I went through and the craziness of touring around the world and life flipping upside down, Ramblin’ is about coming back home and having real relationships when I was off the road,” he explains. “Relationships with friends, with significant others, with family, with faith. I’m grounding myself in this music.”

That sense of reconnection runs through the 12-track record, which explores love, relationships, friendship, family and faith while retaining the open-road sensibility that has become central to Gossett’s music.

The album’s emotional centre is Headed Back To Austin, now accompanied by a live performance filmed at the Lake House. The stripped-back performance puts the song’s songwriting and Gossett’s vocal delivery at the forefront, reinforcing the sense of returning to the place that shaped him. Alongside the new track, Ramblin’ includes previously released songs Clothesline, Loving You Like That and Honeysuckle, which offered an early glimpse of the direction Gossett was taking with his second album.

The record moves through twelve songs, from the opening Loving You Like That and Clothesline to Love and Such, The Old Me, the title track Ramblin’, Head In The Clouds, Running From The Sun, Snow Melt, Just Fine and All Mine.

The album arrives at a significant point in Gossett’s rapid rise. Since emerging from Austin, he has accumulated almost 1.5 billion career streams, led by breakthrough song Coal, which is now certified 2x Platinum in the US and Multi-Platinum internationally.

His progression from independent songwriter to one of the most in-demand new names in country and Americana has also been reflected in an increasingly ambitious live schedule. Gossett has shared stages with George Strait, Zach Top, Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, HARDY and The Red Clay Strays, while appearing at major festivals including Stagecoach and Austin City Limits Music Festival. He has also collaborated with artists including Noeline Hofmann and Ole 60, further connecting his music with the wider contemporary country and Americana community.

With more than 200,000 headline tickets sold worldwide, Gossett’s touring audience has expanded well beyond the US. His current run has included North American dates supporting Mumford & Sons and The Red Clay Strays, followed by a co-headlining US tour with Charles Wesley Godwin.

His international schedule continues to grow, with headline dates across Australia and New Zealand later this year before Gossett brings Ramblin’ to Europe and the UK in February 2027. The European and UK run includes shows in Utrecht and Brussels before Gossett arrives in London for a headline performance at O2 Academy Brixton on 18th February. He then visits Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow before finishing the UK run with a second Glasgow show and heading to Dublin for a performance at 3Arena.

Dylan Gossett

Dylan Gossett (Harrison Hargrave)

The European dates will feature Noah Rinker, while Gossett’s expanding festival calendar includes a return to Stagecoach in California in April 2027.

For an artist whose career has been propelled by constant movement, Ramblin’ finds Gossett looking in the opposite direction. The album takes the experiences accumulated through years of touring and turns them into songs about what it means to return home, reconnect and find meaning in the relationships that remain when the road finally disappears from view.

Upcoming UK & Ireland Live Dates:

FEBRUARY 2027
18th – London, O2 Academy Brixton
19th – Manchester, O2 Victoria Warehouse
21st – Birmingham, O2 Academy Birmingham
23rd – Glasgow, O2 Academy Glasgow
24th – Glasgow, O2 Academy Glasgow
27th – Dublin, 3Arena

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