Los Angeles indie-punks Jacob the Horse take on the rise of modern fascism, dealing with anxiety, and rallying cries for anarchy and Satan on new album At Least It’s Almost Over, out today. It hits that nostalgic sweet spot of classic punk with elements of grunge, while bringing in tight, modern, folk-punk lyrical content that speaks to the time we’re living in now. It sparks equal parts anger and depression, while making sure we’re all having a great time listening. It’s the kind of album that you find at 14-years-old and it changes your life forever, in the same way The Clash did in the ‘70s, Dead Kennedys in the ‘80s, Propagandhi in the ‘90s, Against Me! In the ‘00s and Amyl and the Sniffers today. It’s telling you that it’s okay to be upset, to open your eyes and be part of a movement.
Jacob the Horse is Aviv Rubinstien (guitar, lead vocals), Rick Chapman (drums), Mark Desrosiers (bass) and Josh Fleury (lead guitar). At Least It’s Almost Over was engineered and produced by Jack Shirley (Jeff Rosenstock, Deafheaven, Gouge Away) at The Atomic Garden Recording Studio in Oakland, and includes several updated re-recordings of previously released songs: “The Black Hand,” Keystone State,” “666 Chicks” “The River,” and “Totally Depressed.”
At Least It’s Almost Over kicks off with the swirling, psychedelic, instrumental title-track. This intro is an anticipatory calm before the storm, a big breath before a long scream. It incorporates orchestral themes from songs we’ll hear later in the album, while in the background audio from the film Night of the Living Dead carries a warning of the end times… the record is just beginning, but at least it’s almost over.
We jump into the political-punk gunshot that is “Bad New Religion” whose opening lines, “three-two-one / one-two-three / Hang a Nazi from a tree,” tells us exactly the kind of anti-fascist call for revolution this entire record is. It’s an angry indie-punk anthem telling you to get up and do something about the injustice you see around you. “It’s delusional to think that anyone can save us in a way that won’t involve a city burning down,” sings Rubinstien. It’s a song in conversation with bands like Bad Religion and Fugazi, where you see what’s happening to the world and have to do more than just post on social media, or scream into your pillow, to fill that void in your soul.
“There are literal Nazis in the streets of America,” says Rubinstien. “They’re pushing Trumpism down our throat like that old-time religion. Los Angeles is a really diverse city, and it’s one of the frontlines of Trump’s culture war against the people of the United States.”
“Tympanis” is another screaming into the void song. It’s driving punk rock meets Queens of the Stone Age desert rock, with big Foo Fighter-esque, four-on-the-floor drums. Its vocal and guitar hooks lure you in with their clever dynamicism. The song freezes in a moment of panic and self-hatred. The song plays out like the soundtrack to a Russ Meyer film, as Rubinstien sings, “She clutches to her rosary / And carves her name into my arm / With her eyes as she stares at me / ‘I should have listened to my mom,’” or the accusatory chorus, “Your hair smells like the ocean, baby / Where did you go yesterday?”
The hard rocking communist house-party anthem “The Black Hand” comes at you with an impish wink as Rubinstien sings about anarchy, stockpiling guns, worker rights and Satan. Its big classic-rock guitars, AC/DC attitude, and fun gang vocals makes you feel like you’re in the midst of a beer-swilling outlaw biker party. The Black Hand was the anarchist group who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, kicking off World War I. The Black Hand of this song are a fictional group of party animals who want to kick off a revolution and maybe spark World War III. This is all part of Rubinstien’s rabble-rousing stage persona, that loves to piss off the opposition.
“I’m not a card carrying Satanist, but this song is the closest thing we have to a ‘70s homage to things like how AC/DC mocked the Satanic Panic with “Highway to Hell.” But, we’re working out real grievances through that lens. The big finish should’ve been ‘where all the drinks are free,’” laughs Rubinstien.
“Keystone State” confronts the idea that maybe you’d be happier if you didn’t follow your dreams, and specifically what might’ve happened if Rubinstien had never left Pennsylvania for Boston and LA. Big rocking guitars pair with lyrics like, “Could’ve had a couple kids / Could’ve fell in love again / Been a big fish in a little lake.”
Jacob the Horse continues their Satanic Russ Meyers mayhem with “666 Chicks,” that imagines women attacking men, to subjugate and eat them, in an audio homage to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Fast and furious riffs blast us into the California desert as women rebel with fire and bourgeoisie necks in guillotines. Rubinstien recites jocular lines like, “All the sick chicks in this sick chick city will die drowning / Will die in flames / Hail Satan / Will die assassinating men who try to keep them chained,” and “My grandmother Hannah used to throw Molotov cocktails at Nazis / and I’m paying ten bucks for coffee / and writing bad poetry / There’s no hope for me.”
“My grandmother, Hannah, was in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Poland and threw literal Molotov cocktails at literal Nazis,” says Rubinstien. “And here I am, singing my little songs about wanting to be an impressive revolutionary or whatever, when she actually fucking did it. And her daughter, my mom, is like ‘maybe the Supreme Court will help. We gotta trust American institutions.’ And I’m like, ‘Your mom threw a fucking bomb at a Nazi.’ She’s like, ‘It’s not the same thing.’ And I’m like, ‘It kind of is!’ We’re getting there, and she’s starting to come around, which is how I know it’s getting bad.”
“Both of my parents are from Israel, and I have predictably consistent progressive, lefty politics. Jewish identity is super fraught in 2025 America. There’s huge teachings of social justice in Judaism, and yet Jews are being painted as the ones that are spearheading this American pro-Israeli genocide — on the supposition that it’s protecting people like me, when it’s actually making people like me far less safe. There are far fewer Jewish people in the United States than there are, say evangelical Christians, and the evangelical Christians are far more virulent in their support of Israel. They pay lip service to the idea that their support is to help Jewish people and fight anti-semitism, but of course the call is coming from inside the house. They clearly don’t care about the safety of Jewish people. And once this all goes pear-shaped, which it will, the Jews will be the easiest people to blame. The thing that makes me the craziest is that conservatives are doing all this to be like, ‘We’re protecting you.’ I’m like, ‘No, you’re fucking not! Fuck you!’”
The “666 Chicks” video, directed by Rubinstien, is a cannibalistic horror film where young women overtake and replace the members of Jacob the Horse. Starring Susi Matza, Emily Joy Lemus, Maddie Bernstein, and Jensen Wysocki, drummer of all-female alt-rock band The Maraschinos. “The best punk is done by women right now,” says Rubinstien. From Amyl and the Sniffers and Lambrini Girls to Gouge Away and Mannequin Pussy, Jacob the Horse’s testosterone-filled revolutionary punk is so passé, and this snuff-film of a video indulges us as we watch their demise with eager anticipation.
The next song begins with Chapman’s six-year-old son Nolan screaming, “This Place Sucks Ass.” This co-write between Rubinstien and Fleury finds the two trading lines in the verses and singing together for the rambunctious chorus, along with Desrosiers’ teenage cousin Vivi Decareau (bringing back some of that new generation, 666 chick, feminine energy). It’s a rowdy sing-alongable stadium rocker lamenting our current tragic state of: ICE raids, genocide, artificial intelligence, and ends with the chant of “I rage, you rage / Trans kids deserve to see old age.”
“The real question of the song is about our future,” says Rubinstien. “It’s always kind of been like this, and there’s no prescription for a solution. It’s not like all we have to do is hug and commiserate. There’s a line I stole from Florence and the Machine, ‘you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive.’ We have to learn how to put that down… how angry we are. I carry a lot of anger with me, all day, every day. This can’t be my entire existence or I’ll die. I won’t be able to function as a human if I’m this angry all the time. What I’m saying by the end of the song is that you can scream ‘This Place Sucks Ass’ and then move on for a while.”
“The River” starts with guitar squall feedback before hitting us with a mega riff that gives way to Rubinstien’s sparse vocals. It’s a song that personifies the river itself as a living anxiety monster that lives inside of you. It’s a panic attack song that says that relief can only come by starting a riot or setting something on fire. An organ kicks in during the choruses, building into a cinematic crescendo in conversation with furious guitars and Rubinstien repeating, “Come be the creature in me / Until I’m Hollow / Protracted / A cavern / An echo / A liar.”
The sneaky lil’ rocker “Clever Cleaver” is about a manic pixie dream girl who’s a ticking clock that’s going to kill some evil people. The song builds in tension, explodes and then does it all again. In the second verse they get into a wild polyrhythm with Rubinstien playing in 4/4, Desrosiers and Fleury in 3/4, Chapman in 5/4 and another drum layer in 7/8. It’s Tank Girl and The Bride from Kill Bill all balled up in a wily antiauthoritarian punk. It’s the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl” if she had a devious violent streak. Rubinstien sings, “She comes downstairs to kiss my face / And clutches to her razorblade / She does her best to drown her thoughts / By snorting bits of adderall.”
“Totally Depressed” takes a page out of the Jeff Rosenstock / Bomb the Music Industry playbook with its talky vocals and Devo-esqe maniacally paced composition, while being insanely catchy with its chorus of repeating the song’s title around 50 times. “You need to be medicated / Forcibly / You need a lobotomy / 50,000 volts of electricity straight to your brain / Something to keep you straight. / Oh it’s fine. Don’t worry mom. I don’t really want to die. / Just maybe life’s not worth being alive so long,” Rubinstien sings.
“I put that verse in there so my mom would know I’m actually okay,” says Rubinstien. “It didn’t work. She’s still worried.”
“Red Rain Boots” is about the eventual death of his husky-pitbull mix Chubbs. It’s a dark song that references Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” and the William Carlos Williams poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
“This came from a songwriting challenge from a friend,” says Rubinstien. “She gave me the word ‘rain boots’ and she thought I’d write something nice. Instead I wrote a song about how one day my dog will die, and when that day happens I’ll march into Heaven to kill God for what he’s done.”
The album ends with “Closer,” an epic song in three parts: I. “AJJ Goes Electric (Shout Anarchy!!!)” / II.”The Black Hand, pt. 2: Fuck the Black Hand” / III. “It’s Over.”
Part one starts with an AJJ riff and references previous songs with lyrics like, “Fuck the band / Fuck keystone state / Fuck the black hand”, while assuring us that everything is going to be fine now… sometimes because “your friends are murdered in the streets” or “are sick or starving / Shot by the police.” ‘Part two’ revisits riffs from “666 Chicks,” “Totally Depressed,” “The River,” “The Black Hand,” and a bit of “Keystone State,” before moving into ‘part three’ with its big, shredding guitar rock instrumentals in 6/8 time… bringing us to the moment when the album is actually over.
“‘AJJ Goes Electric’ is an acknowledgement that we’re pulling a riff from them, which is funny, because I think that song is already electric. I also wanted to write a song called ‘The Black Hand, pt. 2: Fuck the Black Hand,’ because once again, I think it’s funny. Then I look back on the previous songs of anger, protest and revolution, and think that I didn’t know shit. I’m an idiot. I can be as angry as I want, but I’m still just singing in front of people. I’m not actually doing anything. We also steal from The Long Winters song ‘The Commander Thinks Aloud,’ which is about the space shuttle Columbia blowing up. That’s where the lyrics, ‘The crew compartment is breaking up,’ comes from. And then ‘part three’ is ‘It’s Over,’ because the record starts with, ‘At Least It’s Almost Over,’ and now we’re at the end. It’s over. Play this record from beginning to end and the world will end. It’s like typing Google into Google and the internet breaks,” Rubinstien laughs.
“Even if this country falls apart, we won’t be the first on the list to go to Gitmo. We’re white, we’re men and we’re all American born. That comes with a certain degree of privilege, and we want to use that privilege to spit in the face of the people who are doing really, really evil things to our trans homies, to our people-of-color homies, LGBTQ homies, and everyone else. There could come a time when an album like this becomes illegal, that music like this will be considered terroristic speech and no longer protected by the Constitution. I hope that people remember that there’s more of us than there are of them, that the day this type of music becomes illegal is the day that a million teenagers buy guitars from pawn shops and start writing their own ‘Bad New Religion’ and ‘666 Chicks.’ Maybe there’ll be some anthem, right? Maybe some song or slogan will break through and be the rallying cry of the revolution. I don’t think it’s going to be our music. It would be awesome if it is. I want someone, somewhere, to write the song of the revolution and that to be of the rallying cry for people to stop all this fucking nonsense. We have to take the cartridge out, blow in it, and plug it back in if we’re going to survive this. Redo the government. Rebuild everything from scratch.”