The Nomads are a Swedish garage punk band founded in 1981 by Hans Östlund, Nick Vahlberg, Joakim Tärnström and Ed Johnson. Today, Östlund and Vahlberg are the only members left of the original line-up.
They are not to be confused with the American group, 'The Nomads' (aka Los Nomadas) formed at California's Whittier High School in 1953 by Bill Aken (Zane Ashton) and Chico Vasquez. This group stayed together for more than 30 years, recording for various record labels and backing up Latino recording artists until Chico's death in 1995.
The band plays music influenced by the MC5, The Stooges, Roky Erikson, The Cramps, The Ramones, New York Dolls and other early garage rock and punk bands. The Nomads have been an influential band in the Scandinavian garage rock and punk scenes, inspiring bands such as The Hives, Hellacopters, Gluecifer, and many others.
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by Todd Kristel
Based in Stockholm, the Nomads have stood out from other garage rock revivalists because of the intensity of their performances and the wide range of their influences, which extend beyond the usual 60s bands to encompass 70s punk, heavy metal, rockabilly, and blues. Their first release was a crude remake of the Sonics Psycho; the band pressed 500 copies of this self-financed single in 1981 but had to discard 50 copies because of defects. They followed this with another single, a blistering rendition of Night Time by the Strangeloves, and received wider recognition with their first mini-album, Where the Wolf Bane Blooms. In 1984, they conducted their first European tour and garnered attention in the United States for their Outburst album. Despite successful attempts to broaden their sound, such as using horns on a recording of Jeff Conollys She Pays the Rent and a trashy synthesizer on the Suicide-influenced My Deadly Game, they have not managed to gain more than a small cult following in the States; this may be because they have recorded only a limited number of original songs. Nonetheless, they have managed to create some genuinely exciting, if not particularly innovative, music.