Today is a great day to share the newest single and music video from L.A. indie punk band Jacob The Horse, called “The Black Hand.” Jacob The Horse is Aviv Rubinstien (Guitar, Lead Vocals), Rick Chapman (Drums, Vocals), Mark Desrosiers (Bass, Vocals), and Josh Fleury (Lead Guitar, Vocals, Organ), and their vibrant music chemistry is on full display on this song. Rubinstein shared: “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’.” With a sound that is equal parts White Reaper, PUP, and Against Me!, Jacob The Horse make a worthy battle cry that they have arrived. If you’re enjoying “The Black Hand,” keep an eye out for the release of their new record, At Least It’s Almost Over, on March 20th.
Band Commentary on “The Black Hand”
Aviv Rubinstien: This song started out as a sort of ’70s style rocker originally called Communist Parties that was about the group of friends and roommates I had during college. They were anarchists, communists, living in a party house, organizing, and fulfilling all of their idealistic dreams. The communist party is a specific one where one of my roommates brought a band back to our apartment on a Thursday night before my 9am Friday class. They partied and danced and scream-talked all night until around 4am. I gave up trying to sleep and just joined them. It was a literal communist party.
The lyrics evolved from just being about that one event in my life to the type of song that these young, idealistic communists and anarchists would be listening to. Something that called for social and political change through a tongue-in-cheek reference to the assassination that caused the start of World War I.
Mark Desrosiers: Nothing says “Vanguard of the Proletariat” like “unemployed over-educated college students with silk-soft hands!” Historically and ironically, though, that’s also precisely the kind of people who organized revolutions!
Aviv Rubinstien: The Black Hand was an Anarchist group (also called Unification or Death, which is brutal as fuck) in Serbia that was allegedly behind the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand (like the 2000s indie band). The story is a little crazier than you learn about in high school history class. It involves a grenade that didn’t explode and Franz Ferdinand stopping for a sandwich.
If there is a story within the song, I imagine a new modern “Black Hand” that’s using the imagery of Anarchy and Satanism as tools to fight the fascists that are keeping everyone scared.
Mark Desrosiers: When the currently-ascendant political movement is made up almost entirely of Christian fundamentalists, it seems natural to turn to their own made-up enemy as a rallying point.
Josh Fleury: In the third verse, when Aviv sings “Satan! Satan! Satan!,” I used to think he was shouting “Safe! Safe! Safe!” like a baseball reference (I don’t fucking know why) and when we do it live I feel like Aviv purposely drags the lyric out differently to go “Ssssssatan!….. sssSatan!……………. sssssssssSAtan!”, or maybe he doesn’t realize he’s doing that.
Aviv Rubinstien: I do
Josh Fleury: Is he having a stroke? Should we bring him to the hospital?
Aviv Rubinstien: Yes.
Aviv Rubinstien: I’m more serious about Anarchy than I am about Satan. Much like communism and socialism, the public conception of Anarchy is not what it actually is. Anarchy doesn’t mean chaos. It just means a society based on voluntary cooperation without a political hierarchy. So the mutual aid that we’re seeing in Minnesota right now as a reaction to ICE’s Gestapo tactics is a form of Anarchy. Is Anarchy viable on a large scale? Probably not, there are too many people acting in bad faith– but Capitalism and Oligarchy have the same problem. America loves blaming Communism, Socialism, and even Anarchy for the outcomes of unfettered Capitalism.
Mark Desrosiers: Musically our original “plan” for this record was to do a bluesy, “Dad-rock”-style riff record, and this might be the song that shows that original intent the most. As the world changed, so did the vibe of the record, but the riff stayed!
Rick Chapman: It’s like socially-conscious AC/DC.
Mark Desrosiers: We wanted this to be, if not a “concept” album, at least a capital-R Record, and Closer [the final song on the record] is the bookend. So many of the songs describe our inner monologue, which is always self-contradictory. So The Black Hand is both this violent revolutionary archetype we draw strength from, and then in Closer we have a part that is called “Fuck The Black Hand” for being the cause of a global catastrophe like World War I.
Aviv Rubinstien: And like fuck our song in general. Why are we making party music about a very serious topic, you know?
Rick Chapman: That’s kind of our style though. Like in the second verse we sing: “Mercy Me, Mercy Me, Mercy Me” Like an old timey southern phrase and then in the next moment reference getting out of medical debt through violence.