Famous for its airport, hat factory, Vauxhall Motors and the irregular form of its local football team, Luton circa ’77 offered enough alienation and boredom – if not despair – to attract young punk disciples.

The city itself was devoid of suitable venues, but strategic raids on Dunstable’s nearby Queensway Hall by both Sex Pistols and The Clash were enough to galvanise a few single-minded local youths into action.

The Jets were arguably Luton’s first punk strike force. Yet, while they were responsible for the fine Original Terminal single (released by Terri Hooley’s Belfast-based Good Vibrations imprint), they sported long hair and were pushing 30. The Resistors and Pneumania, however, fitted punk’s profile rather better: they were in their late teens, keen to crib three chords and spew out the truth as they saw it.

Formed by drummer Steve Harle and bassist Martin ‘Segovia’ Smith in 1978, The Resistors also featured guitarist Steven ‘Abbo’ Abbott and – briefly – two different vocalists who looked the part, but couldn’t sing. When the second, Paul Wilson, departed, Abbo took over centre stage and The Resistors became UK Decay: just in time to make a telling contribution to punk’s DIY explosion.

“Punk had inspired me to start a fanzine, Rubber People, and Spon (then Pneumania’s guitarist) was doing another one called The Suss,” Abbo reveals. “Pneumania lived in a squat on (Luton’s) Wellington Road, but they got a cheap rent on this place which became a record and clothes shop. They had the first Space Invaders machine in Luton and stocked records they got from Rough Trade in London; really brilliant, exotic stuff like [reggae DJ/ producer] Prince Far I. I don’t remember anyone ever buying anything, but it was a great social scene. Pneumania and UK Decay sprang from that, though we had absolutely no aspirations to be a professional band.

“Making the first record [the UK Decay/ Pneumania Split 7”] was about a moment in time. We’d done maybe six or seven gigs. We were good friends with Pneumania. I’d known Gaynor [Griffiths, aka Sno White] their singer, since I was at school, we lived one street apart, and were part of this little local scene we had.”

Now capable of fetching £25, the split 7”, featuring two tracks apiece by the bands, was released in the summer of ’79 on UK Decay’s own Plastic imprint, paid for in part by a grant Abbo had received to set it up. Some 2,000 copies were pressed, but nobody envisaged many of them shifting until its four raw ’n’ rudimentary tracks were savaged in the NME.

“We took the first box of singles to Rough Trade, expecting nothing,” Abbo recalls. “Then Danny Baker and Charles Shaar Murray slagged it off, saying it was the worst punk record ever. As soon as the review appeared, it sold and sold! Taking a new box of records up to Rough Trade became a daily jaunt. Everyone wanted a copy of ‘the worst punk single ever’, plus its quaintness appealed. No one else had done a split 7” single back then.”

It eventually sold out its 2,000 run, but wasn’t re-pressed. By the time UK Decay’s second release, The Black 45 EP, appeared early in 1980, they’d already outgrown their debut, becoming a proficient unit with the addition of former Pneumania guitarist Spon.

Abbo: “Spon completed us. I’d played guitar (badly) before he came in, but when he arrived it clicked. Spon was a keyboard player originally and he tried to make his guitar sound like keyboards. He had this ringing guitar sound, really distinctive, but while he received a lot of John McGeoch comparisons, he listened to Dr Alimantado and The Doors. Robby Krieger was his hero, not the punk guitarists.”

In a similar sonic vein to The Scream-era Banshees, The Black 45 EP was a vast improvement on the split single, and it introduced UK Decay to the independent charts, reaching No 42 during a three-week run. Eventually it sold around 40,000 copies.

“We were totally naive and never saw UK Decay as a career,” Abbo confesses. “The first time we played in London, supporting Spizz at The Nashville when The Black 45 EP came out, we couldn’t believe anyone would be interested outside Luton. But at that gig there were about 350 people and 200 bought the single afterwards. Following that, loads of people booked us and then Alex Howe from the Fresh label offered us a distribution deal. Then he asked us to make a record for Fresh.”

Their star in the ascendency, UK Decay released two landmark post-punk 45s for Fresh over the winter of 1980. The first, the resolute anti-war anthem For My Country, spent eight months in the indie chart, peaking at No 13. Its February 1981 follow-up, the chilling, Edgar Allan Poe-esque Unexpected Guest (partly based on Abbo’s recollections of his family home being burgled as a kid) also made the indie Top 10. Collectively, the two singles sold around a very healthy 80,000 copies.

Unexpected Guest’s release coincided with a feature in rock weekly Sounds entitled “The Face Of Punk Gothique” wherein Abbo used the term “gothic” as a way to describe UK Decay’s often menacingly dramatic music – blissfully unaware that it would end up becoming a movement of sorts. “We were with [music journalist] Steve Keaton in Brussels and during the interview I casually described our music as ‘gothic’,” Abbo recalls.

“Now, the only thing we tend to be remembered for is coining the phrase ‘gothic’, which has lived longer than any of the music we made… which says it all really.

“We gigged with other quite disparate bands that also got labelled as ‘goths’, though. Southern Death Cult were really good live. I was friends with Ian [Astbury] for years and was actually going to start a band with Billy Duffy when I was living in Brixton later on, but he was totally into AC/DC and heavy rock. Ian made a better partner for him in The Cult.”

Between the release of For My Country and the arrival of Unexpected Guest, UK Decay embarked on their first major bout of touring, supporting Dead Kennedys on a 30-date UK jaunt. The bands got on so well that Jello Biafra invited UK Decay to tour the US in the spring of ’81, but by this time, original bassist Martin ‘Segovia’ Smith had quit for unlikely personal reasons. “His girlfriend wouldn’t let him go to the States,” shrugs Abbo, incredulously. “Instead, the Kennedys’ manager got the then- 14-year-old Creetin K-OS [from Californian surf-punksters Social Unrest] to play with us. He’d learned all the songs – he was much more organised than us! Like everything else with UK Decay, we never planned for the US properly. We got detained in Chicago for 12 hours because we had the wrong papers and no visas.”

A Spinal Tap-esque twist then prevented UK Decay from playing their scheduled US debut at San Francisco’s Mabuhay Gardens.

Abbo: “We were all 19 and it was strictly 21s-and-over, so they wouldn’t let us play. Maybe they did us a favour because we got an extra day to rehearse with Creetin K-OS… and get to know our songs as well as he did!

“Eventually, we did about 15 really good gigs on the West Coast. But we were usually on bills with future punk/hardcore legends such as DOA, Circle Jerks and the pre-Henry Rollins Black Flag. Amazing bands, but from our point of view, it was like being a boxer, seeing your opponent and knowing you had no chance, yet still getting up there and punching anyway.”

Bloodied, but unbowed, after their US experience, UK Decay set about recording their heavily anticipated debut LP For Madmen Only with producer/engineer John Loder at London’s Southern Studios. Sessions stretched over the summer of 1981, partly to allow UK Decay to play their first major UK headline tour (supported by Play Dead and fellow Fresh stalwarts The Dark) but also to introduce new full-time bassist Eddie ‘Twiggy’ Branch.

With critical momentum continuing to build and the band’s following swelling, the Fresh label’s November ’81 release of For Madmen Only could have been the springboard to success for UK Decay, but chaos intervened.

“[It] looked like it was really going to do well,” Abbo recalls. “It shipped 40,000 in its first week and the signs were good. Then Fresh collapsed. It was a tense time but, thanks to John Loder, we got the rights to our catalogue back and formed the UK Decay label.”

Hurriedly deleted due to the collapse of Fresh, For Madmen Only became a lesser-known cult item in terms of influence, but, in recent years, alt.rock luminaries such as Dave Grohl and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor have sung its praises. It was finally awarded an expanded CD reissue in 2009.

“I’m not one for looking back, and we don’t actually play much of it live now,” Abbo says. “But I’m still proud of the title track. It was a song outside of any musical genre. It was inspired by the US tour and there was a general attitude towards Americans, condemned as ignorant and arrogant by us ‘cultured’ Europeans. But being there for five weeks we met many disaffected citizens who felt totally disenfranchised by their own country, whether they were Vietnam vets – the war ended only five years before – or African-Americans, and of course, the young Americans around the punk scene whose opinions could not find a way into the ‘democracy’ of their country, the land of the free. It felt like a powder keg.”

Despite Fresh’s implosion, it first looked as though UK Decay still might triumph. Thanks to negotiation from John Loder, Crass’ Penny Rimbaud offered to release their first post-Fresh recordings, the Rising From The Dread 12” on Crass offshoot label, Corpus Christi.

Abbo: “We’d played with Crass before, so we were delighted and relieved when they said “here’s two and a half grand, go make a record… no strings.” John Loder helped broker the deal and we cut the EP, including [the 10-minute] Werewolf, which was totally spontaneous from a jam session, no prior conception. We’d no idea what the Crass guys would make of it, but they were cool. Then John Peel opened his show with Werewolf four nights in succession and it sold really well.”

Spurred on by this success, UK Decay toured during 1982, but simmering internal tensions gradually rose to boiling point.

“With hindsight, I think we never really recovered after Fresh went belly up. We kept touring for a while, both Europe and the UK during 1982, including a great one with Southern Death Cult and The Danse Society at London’s Zig Zag. Most of it was good, but we’d started to have a lot of trouble with the National Front. The thing is, our music was never directly political,” Abbo stresses. “We’d supported Rock Against Racism and done various benefits, but we were outspoken too, which didn’t go down well in certain quarters. We did a gig in Middlesborough, for example, where about 40 skinheads were waiting for us outside the gig and a lot of shows started getting very violent. We were losing control, getting frustrated and those feelings got internalised, culminating with Spon and the normally very chilled Steve Harle having a massive fight on tour in Germany.”

UK Decay bowed out, apparently for good, after some emotionally-charged final shows in December 1982. Selections from their two-night swansong at Hammersmith’s Klub Foot were released posthumously on the cassette-only A Night To Remember in 1983.

They all remained active. Spon formed In Excelsis to make several EPs for the Jungle and In X imprints with personnel from goth rockers Ritual, while Steve Harle and Eddie Branch joined forces with Abbo and ex-Gene Loves Jezebel guitarist Albie de Luca to form Furyo. Produced by Flood (U2, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins), their Furioso 12” and self-titled mini-LP release for Jungle (both ’84) are grandiose goth baroque follies and Abbo recalls them with anything but fondness.

“Looking back, I really enjoyed the whole UK Decay experience, but I can’t say the same of Furyo,” he says. “What we did confuses me. It was so far out, I didn’t get it myself. There’s an unreleased LP that I think was more representative of what we could have been, but I clashed with Albie from day one. He’s very talented and a strong personality, but it never really gelled as a band.”

Tragically, Steve Harle passed away while travelling in India during 1995. Abbo, meanwhile, kept busy with everything from tour managing to a spell in Ghana with UNESCO, while Eddie Branch later worked with Peter Murphy from 1986-1992. Post-In Excelsis, Spon formed The Big Eye (who recorded for the Hydrogen Dukebox label during the 90s) and has released two techno-inclined solo LPs – 1997’s Earthlights and 2011’s Doomsday Dot Com as Nostramus.

An official UK Decay website was launched in 2005, but while an expanded A Night For Celebration (retitled Nights For Celebration) and 2007’s Death So Fatal compilation of rarities followed in its wake, the idea of a permanent UK Decay reformation only began to manifest after a supposedly one-off Luton gig in 2008 was followed by a headline appearance at Lisbon’s punk/DIY Drop Dead Festival the same year, with new drummer Raymondo Philpott (ex-Ritual) on board.

Things accelerated when new songs began to come into the set, not least because the band believed they’d just as much to rail against as they did at the turn of the 80s. Abbo: “We lived in the shadow of the Cold War in the late 70s and early 80s, but while the world’s an even darker place now, a lot of people couldn’t care less. That apathy and passivity really scares me. Our frustration at where the world is galvanised us to write the songs for the new LP.”

Produced by renowned hard rock/metal producer Chris ‘The Dark Lord’ Tsangarides, UK Decay’s comeback LP New Hope For The Dead (released through Rainbow City) is urgent, credible and refreshingly nostalgia-free. With many of its key tracks relating to big issues such as extremism and bigotry, it sounds entirely contemporary. “Revolutionary Love Song was one of the first songs written, in 2011, and it’s about Luton today. It’s not the place we grew up in, which had virtual racial harmony. It’s almost unbelievable as the world issues play out in our local theatre,” Abbo says, referring to Luton’s unfortunate modern-day reputation for violence and racial tension.

This image has been skewed by everything from the city numbering alleged Muslim extremists among its residents through to the presence of the far right-inclined English Defence League in the area. Abbo says: “Our recent Luton show (at The Hat Factory) was promoted by Fahim Quereshi, an old school mate. We were talking about trying to start an initiative to crossthe religious divide, before it comes down to ‘revolution or sharia law’. The media and the boneheads would love that one.”

Looking to the wider world, the chilling, Ruts-esque Killer, one side of the band’s recent white vinyl 7”, lambasts a US foreign policy that can “send another drone to get the meat”.

“It’s about the casual acceptance of the ‘take out’, the way America and the Western allies gloat about clearing up everyone else’s mess,” Abbo comments. “I wrote it in about 10 minutes whilst the band were out on a beer run at the studio. I had a real laugh with the wordplay. The line: ‘I like to spread my hot sauce on everything’ seemed to describe US foreign policy to a T.”

New Hope For The Dead adds up to more than the politics of dissent, however. Also contained are candidly personal tracks such as the haunting, hymnal Drink (Abbo didn’t touch alcohol until he was 35, when a trip to Cuba gave him a taste for margueritas and cigars) and the wobbly funk of Woman With A Black Heart, wherein Abbo warns about sleeping with “anyone crazier than yourself”.

Taken as a whole, it’s one of the year’s most startling comeback albums, with a truly striking, oil varnish-finished LP (and CD) sleeve designed by Franko B. The radical Italian-born, Brixton-based multimedia artist has links to the original anarcho scene from the late 70s. Abbo explains: “Jim, our manager, is a big fan of Franko’s and suggested him. I was really impressed with the way he combined the British and US flags and his use of oil, the almighty commodity, as the medium. It’s an amazing image. The only trouble is, each of the covers took three weeks to dry and they wouldn’t shrink-wrap, so the release date got put back by weeks.

“But it’s worth it,” he concludes. “I’m still passionate about a proper slab of vinyl with a proper sleeve. Despite all the changes that have come, that’s what this is still all about, isn’t it?”