Hugernaut

Crisp drumming, menacing bass, brooding vocals, raucous guitar accents...

…Anti Social Social, which opens this rural Victoria-based trio’s tremendous latest album, Circulator, is impossible to ignore.

Listeners will feel like they’re in the recording studio, rocking-out alongside the band. Better brace yourself for that blistering guitar solo, too! We can see why Hugo Horvat’s guitar teacher – Terry Murry, a retired neighbour from up the street who played lead guitar on The Wiggles’ first two albums and has performed with musical legends such as Tom Jones, Randy Crawford, Tommy Emmanuel and Jimmy Barnes – declared of his pupil, “I believe he could be the next David Bowie!”

Hugernaut play as one unit, with effortless synergy, so it comes as no surprise that all three band members are blood-related: Horvat’s older brother Gerard smashes the drumkit and their dad, Gabriel, plays bass.

The initial plan was for the brothers to move to Melbourne and follow their musical dreams. But when the global pandemic struck, they remained in regional Victoria and kept it in the family.

Hugo and Gerard are very proud to have their dad on board, and believe the multigenerational lineup gives them an edge.

“Almost everybody we meet believes I am just a friend of theirs or a bit of an older sibling,” says Gabriel of his close bond with his sons.

“The only difference is I literally saw both of them come into this world and we’ve all known each other all our lives.”

It all started back in 2020, with Hugo and Gerard jamming on covers in their isolated rural Victorian country farmhouse. During Covid lockdowns, the brothers honed their chops and decided to form a yet-to-be-named band.

After completing his final year of high school in his pyjamas (over video link), Hugo headed to JMC Academy in Melbourne to study sound engineering while Gerard perfected his craft – drumming up a storm and undoubtedly disrupting their quiet country neighbourhood.

Over the next few years, the brothers built their own studio – Asbestos Studio, near Castlemaine – and started writing songs.

While searching for their own distinctive sound, they experimented with everything from “blue-eyed soul to jazzy country and post-punk rock”.

By the end of 2024, they had recorded two EPs and two albums composed entirely of original material.

Then halfway through 2025, they found their sound: “on the slightly less distorted end of indie alternative rock, often with more of a pop-rock feel.”

Ten fresh tracks, which would become Circulator, were composed to reflect the brothers’ real-life experiences: “relationship breakdowns, the vulnerability of everyday existence and the day-to-day grind of social media.”

When Hugernaut approached esteemed producer Oscar Dawson (Teen Jesus And The Jean Teasers, Alex Lahey, The Rions) to mix their record, he jumped at the chance to work with them. Circulator, which was recorded to capture the magic of their live performance style, was completed earlier this year.

Designed to listen to in its entirety, from start to finish, Circulator encapsulates various moods and emotions. From the cacophonous, stacks-on energy of Quid Pro Quo’s intro to the desolate, gently strummed closing track, In The Rain (“Is there anybody out there who understands?”), Hugernaut’s arrangements are nuanced and emotionally expansive.

Jangly guitar riffs enliven Dream (think: Blur’s Song 2), So Long This Year features glorious blood harmonies and a measured, complex drum pattern underscores Rip & Run. Pleaser, the album’s penultimate track, even brings You Really Got Me by The Kinks to mind.

Having previously only performed in front of small, regional audiences, Hugernaut now feel primed and ready to launch in the Big Smoke. So what can Melbourne audiences expect from their upcoming shows? “With some big-arse amps and not a lot of monologging, it’s all about how the music makes you feel,” Gerard enlightens. “There are no flashy stunts, no flashin’ a lot of skin. It’s all about the music.”

We get why they’re called Hugernaut – not only is their frontman named Hugo, but also their sound is really huge for a three-piece!

Let’s talk about the radical act of liking something without apologizing for it. Dream is a love song that doesn’t smirk, doesn’t hedge, doesn’t roll its eyes at its own emotions — and in 2026, that alone feels borderline rebellious. Hugernaut come flying in with a jangling guitar riff that sounds like it’s been living in a shed, surviving on sweat and repetition, and frankly, that’s exactly where it belongs.

The groove is immediate, the bass doing its job like a trusted friend who won’t let you fall off the back of a moving vehicle. The drums push forward with that beautiful, barely contained enthusiasm of someone who believes momentum can solve most problems. Lyrically, Dream is earnest to the point of danger. Light, prayer, devotion, night and day — this is romantic language stripped of quotation marks and delivered straight. And instead of collapsing under the weight of sincerity, the song thrives on it. Because Hugernaut don’t ask you to laugh along. They ask you to feel something and stay with it. The bridge kicks the whole thing into another gear, flinging the track into a guitar solo that feels gloriously unconcerned with restraint.

It’s messy in the right places, human in the right ways. When the vocal jumps an octave, it doesn’t feel like a trick — it feels like the natural consequence of the song needing more space to breathe. What really sells Dream is its sense of place. You can hear the isolation, the self-reliance, the decision to build something real rather than chase permission. This is a band that recorded themselves because they could, because they had to, because waiting didn’t make sense anymore. Dream doesn’t try to be cool. It tries to be true. And sometimes, when the amps are loud and the chorus lands just right, that’s more than enough.

SINGLE REVIEW - Dream

Some songs arrive with history already humming inside them, even if they don’t announce their lineage. Dream is one of those songs. It opens with a guitar figure that feels immediately familiar, not because it quotes the past, but because it speaks a language that Australian rock has been whispering for decades: jangle as propulsion, melody as promise, rhythm as invitation. Hugernaut understand that rock songs don’t need to explain themselves to mean something. The opening riff, the simple bass loop, the early vocal line about movement and sway — these aren’t narrative devices so much as signals. This is a song about desire, yes, but also about motion, about being pulled forward by something you might not fully understand. The lyric reaches for devotion without irony. Prayer, light, night and day, obedience to feeling — these are big words in a small frame, and that tension is precisely where the song lives. Dream doesn’t ask whether fantasy is dangerous or foolish. It simply observes that people build entire lives around it. The repetition of the central phrases feels almost liturgical, like a chant passed from mouth to mouth until belief becomes shared. Musically, the band lean into the physicality of the song. The drums push, the bass holds the centre, the guitar alternates between shimmer and bite. When the bridge arrives, it doesn’t soften the track; it sharpens it, throwing the lyric forward into a solo that feels less like a break and more like a continuation of the argument. The recording carries the sense of a room containing three people listening to each other closely. That matters.

The mix preserves the raw edges, the sense that this could tip over if handled too carefully. When the song returns to its central riff and chant-like resolution, it doesn’t feel like a conclusion so much as a landing — the end of a ride you didn’t realize had momentum until it stopped. Dream places Hugernaut inside a long conversation about rock as communal feeling rather than personal brand. It doesn’t shout its influences. It doesn’t need to. It simply steps forward and keeps moving.