Photo by Klara Ferm
MANKIND are Stockholm’s soundtrack to the apocalypse. The four-piece make art rock with a rust-coating of scuzz, music that flicks between dirt-raw and gritty and playful and snarky. That style attracted the attention of THE STROKES producer Gordon Raphael, and he produced Blood, Sugar, an earlier single. Now they’ve got a new EP on the way, and we’re happy to give you an early taste of it with the premiere of their new single Three Handfuls Of Dirt.
Three Handfuls Of Dirt is the heaviest we’ve heard MANKIND for a while. The band are confirmed STOOGES fans, and here they channel the soul of Iggy and the gang hard, to create a harsh, brutalist song that heaves with barely-restrained violence and menace. The band say:
“It’s the most explicit song on the EP. It’s a transformative piece about mourning and coping with loss. While many other of our tracks are expressive, conversational and almost witty, this is somewhat simpler and repetitive. When you are dealing with loss it’s like being equipped with a new range of emotions and deprived of your old ones, and that requires a new language. Repetitive because you find yourself in the same pain over and over again but you can do nothing about it except taking a deep breath and accept it for now. Moments later it will hit you again. It will hit you over and over until you go numb. The music has to be direct and the lyrics objective.”
In terms of channelling all that into a song, MANKIND have definitely succeeded here. Three Handfuls Of Dirt is a raw, heavy song that hits where it matters. It’s out on April 28th and theirs new EP Death arrives on May 12th on Lazy Octopus. In the meantime you can check out Three Handfuls Of Dirt below.