Comprised of Arthur Onion, Fredrik Differ, Oliver Boson, and Alex Ceci, the up-and-coming, Stockholm, Sweden-based indie rock quartet Mankind have developed a local and national profile for crafting anthemic and bluesy, garage rock reminiscent of The Black Keys, Winstons, and others; however, they set themselves apart from their cohorts with material that not only thematically focuses on heavy and dark subjects — namely nihilism, mourning the lost of loved ones, the contemplation of the passing of time and getting older, love, death and extinction while making references to the work of What Whitman, French graphic novels, Tin Pan Alley classics, the Biblical story of Lazarus, and several different religious scriptures on death without being pretentious or purposely difficult; in fact, “Ghost” off the Swedish indie rock quartet’s recently released Death EP focuses on something that will feel and sound familiar — the lingering ghosts of a relationship that have haunted and taunted the song’s narrator, and it evokes someone who has been torturing himself with the “what if’s” and the “if i had known then what i know nows” and so on while desperately trying to accept the fact that it’s over and it’s a part of his past. And in some way, the song’s narrator has to accept the death of a relationship as an actual death.
