The one constant in Horse's meteoric first 18 months as a band has been the overwhelming pace.
They learnt to gallop while still finding their feet. It's been overwhelming at times for the Newcastle indie five-piece of Mason Cappiello (vocals, guitar), Freddie Heslin (keyboards), Jordan Snowden (guitar, vocals), Jakob Roxby (drums) and Fergus Beahan-Goff (bass).
But they've not only survived, they've thrived.
With just a solitary single, the tense and hypnotic Blight, Horse was invited to perform at Brisbane's BigSound last September.
Cappiello remembers freaking out with a rare outbreak of performance anxiety before the BigSound showcase when told how many people would be attending.
"I was like, 'If I mess up, I mess up. I can deal with it'," Cappiello recalls this week.
"But then I was like, 'If I mess up, like I'm stuffing everything up for them [Horse bandmates] and their future and how much effort they've put into the band.'"
Horse's BigSound showcase was an immense success.
"I feel like that's probably what made some people come and check us out, because it's like a bit of an anomaly," Cappiello says of the hype.
"We were maybe the only band on the lineup that had just started that year and put out one song."
Since then the hype has only built for Horse as they followed with the single Headlights.
There's been support shows with red-hot Melbourne post-punk bands Floodlights and Radio Free Alice, and last November Horse was invited to perform at Triple J's 50th anniversary show in front of a packed King Street Bandroom.
"It's kind of progressing, and we're just finding what we actually like and what Horse is," Heslin says.
"Because being so new, Mason [Cappiello] would bring a song and then we would just all play a part, working collaboratively.
"We'd all be doing it from our own kind of interests and things like that at that time, like when the project was beginning."
Horse only played its first show on Boxing Day 2024, but its members are firmly established in the Newcastle music scene.
Cappiello and Snowden played in surf-rock band Midway, and Cappiello and Roxby were members of indie-pop trio Unpretty. Heslin previously played in jazz fusion act The Sneaks.
The formation of Horse stemmed from Cappiello travelling to Europe with Snowden and realising he was dissatisfied with what he was doing with music.
"I was just in other bands doing music I didn't really want to, playing instruments I didn't want to," Cappiello says.
"So I wanted to start a band where I sang and wrote the songs for. Then I just asked my mates who were the best musicians I knew.
"It was pretty chill when we first started. It didn't feel like it was going to be serious. It was just like a bit of fun. It got very serious very quickly.
"Just because we all liked it and it became better than I think we all thought it was going to be."
That seriousness led to the release last week of Horse's thrilling debut six-track EP Ask Me Again Next Year.
I feel like that's probably what made some people come and check us out, because it's like a bit of an anomaly. We were maybe the only band on the lineup that had just started that year and put out one song.
The band's darkly intense post-punk sound has drawn comparisons with fellow Newcastle band Dust, who have built themselves a rabid following due to their impressive albums et cetera, etc (2023) and Sky Is Falling (2025) and international tours with New York post-punk heavyweights Interpol.
Cappiello says the band is very proud of the EP, which features the highlights Gloss and Under The Sun. The band were also perfectly clear about what they wanted to produce at the Interim Studios in Adelaide.
"It was all very rushed, and those were the only songs we had that we wanted to record," he says.
"There wasn't any we went with that was like, 'Oh, let's leave this for later.' We went knowing these are the only six we want to record that we have right now."
Horse kick-start their EP tour in a secret Newcastle east end location on July 25 before hitting the road on their biggest tour to date, passing through Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.
