A New York metal band needed a place to record. They picked Kensington’s allegedly haunted 154-year-old St. Michael’s Lutheran Church.

Recording studios can be stunning spaces: all burnished wood, gleaming glass, and contoured surfaces. That’s great if pristine sound is what you’re looking for — but if your band is a sword-wielding cast of characters whose elaborate lore involves monster rats, all-seeing druids, and resurrected warrior queens, studios might not provide the ideal atmosphere.

In October 2021, Brooklyn doom metal band Castle Rat’s quest to find the ideal space ended not at the gates of some medieval fortress but in the upper story of a 154-year-old Lutheran church in Kensington. They made the trek to Philly to record their forthcoming debut album, “Into the Realm,” a heavy blend of Black Sabbath and Frank Frazetta.

“I’m always chasing after these larger-than-life experiences,” explained Castle Rat founder, vocalist, and guitarist Riley Pinkerton during a Zoom call. After rejecting a Lower East Side studio in a “secret basement” for being too claustrophobic, she envisioned a space at the opposite extreme.

“It had to be something ridiculous with endless ceilings, like a church or a cathedral,” Pinkerton recalled. “Our producer, Davis Shubs, was like, ‘I think I know a guy.’”

That guy turned out to be Port Richmond-based producer, songwriter, and engineer Thomas Johnsen, who records under the name Thantophobe. After losing a makeshift garage space during the pandemic, Johnsen searched the city for a place where he could “record music loudly and be creative.” Rents at most of the options he explored proved daunting, until one day he noticed a surfeit of churches while driving through the Northeast and started cold calling.

St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Kensington let him convert an unused floor into studio space. Instead of isolation booths and sound panels, the vast room boasts a pipe organ, stained glass windows, and a circular labyrinth painted onto the floor.

Better yet, as far as Castle Rat was concerned – it’s allegedly haunted.

“There have been times at night where it sounds as though there’s somebody walking in the rafters, and times when doors have just slammed,” Johnsen said. “Some people might say it’s just a wind draft from the bell tower…”

At this, Pinkerton interrupted. “No! That place is so haunted. I’m not a medium but I’ve always felt things, and there were definitely moments when I’d swear there was someone right behind me.”

The singer should be used to traversing the border between living and dead if the mythology she’s invented for Castle Rat is anything to go by. Sparked by a Halloween gig to start performing in costume, she eventually gave each member of the band a character and a role in the sword and sorcery-inspired story.

Pinkerton herself is the Rat Queen, a resurrected peasant girl from a plague-ridden fantasy realm, charged with defending the Realm from the Rat Reapress, a rat skull-wearing embodiment of death wielding a papier mâché and tinfoil scythe. She’s aided by the mystical Plague Doctor (bassist Ronnie Lanzilotta III), the vampiric Count (guitarist Franco Vittore), and the all-seeing druid (drummer Josh Strmic). Castle Rat concerts combine swordplay and fake blood with their mammoth Tony Iommi-inspired riffs.

“I’ve never been involved in theater,” said Strmic, who sports a crown of antlers and white contact lenses behind the drum kit. “This is a really cool opportunity to not be Josh at the show, to be scary for a night.”

Recording at St. Michael’s provided a similar escape from the everyday, Strmic said. “Hearing those drums in that giant space made me play differently. It’s doom metal, so it’s supposed to have space and size. But in a drum booth I think it would have been forced, where in this space even the creak of the drum throne reverberated.”

“You’re inspired to fill that space sonically,” Pinkerton said. The church was so picturesque that the band later returned to film the video for “Dagger Dragger,” for which she sported a cape and engaged in a sword-vs.-scythe battle with the Rat Reapress.

Pinkerton recalled the moment when she recorded the vocals for “Cry For Me,” the album’s hazy, psychedelic ballad. “Twilight had just begun and none of the lights were on in the church,” she said. “I was watching the light fade through the stained glass and felt like something moved through me. Not to sound insane — it wasn’t like I was possessed by a demon — but it felt like I was drifting through the veil of reality in that moment. I’d never sung the song that way before.”

Castle Rat’s “Into the Realm” will be released April 12 on King Volume Records. Information at: castleratband.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-realm-2