Luton, UK · goth rock · post-punk

UK Decay

1 upcoming festival

One of the bands that accidentally invented goth, still trading in cavernous, tribal post-punk — Luton's darkest export.

UK Decay formed in Luton in 1978, emerging from the town's punk scene before drifting toward the darker, more atmospheric sound that would later be labelled gothic rock. Their records combined tribal drumming, scraping and echoing guitar, and declamatory vocals, and they are frequently cited among the first bands to be described as goth, a term the group's own members had a hand in popularising in interviews of the period. They split in the mid-1980s and reformed decades later, continuing to perform and record. Their sound remains rooted in post-punk rather than the more ornate strands of the genre that followed.

goth rockpost-punk