The latter part of 2013 looked like it might be the end for Watford hardcore punk band Gallows.

They’d successfully recovered from the infighting that led to the departure of original frontman Frank Carter, finding a more than fitting replacement in Wade MacNeil, and released an album through their own record label and continued to play sell-out gigs around the world but, says guitarist Laurent ‘Lags’ Barnard, things were just “winding down”.

Two members were living overseas, everybody had other commitments, both musical and personal, that took up most of their time and the boys themselves just expected that that was it for the band and had no plans to get together again to either record or perform.

So no-one was more surprised than they were at the release of album number four, Desolation Sounds, last month, coinciding with the band’s tenth anniversary this year.

“We weren’t planning to do another record but we’ve just come out and made a really interesting and dynamic album,” says Lags, who lives in Bushey. “It’s the album I’ve dreamt about making.

“I had some song ideas last year and convinced Wade and Stu (Gili-Ross, bassist) to fly over from Toronto and LA and we went into the studio and the ideas were flowing really easily, there was a really good vibe.”

Lags attributes this “vibe” to the boys – the line-up is completed by drummer Lee Barratt from Bricket Wood – returning to the reason they started Gallows in the first place in 2005, to be in a punk rock band, make amazing music and just have fun.

“With everyone spread out and having other things going on, we only get together when we can and that’s kind of made us more relaxed and Gallows more fun,” says Lags.

“It’s gone back to how it was in the beginning, you’re in a band with your mates and just making music for the fun of it. We’re not thinking ‘We’ve got to sell this many records or play this many gigs’ any more, like we were when we were signed to Warner (Bros Records). It’s made it a lot more enjoyable.

“When we were signed to a major label things got really, really intense, it became too much like a business. Now we’ve gone back to our creative and inspiring form, we’re excited about making music. All we’re worried about is how much fun we’re having. It’s like we’ve been released. No-one’s dictating what we have to do, it’s all in our hands. We’re back in control of the band’s destiny, we’re calling the shots.”

The boys are only together for a few months out of the year, the rest of the time they are following their own musical projects. Stu manages bands out in LA, Wade is a DJ for the Toronto station The Edge, and Lags runs the Watford-based Venn Records, through which Desolation Sounds is released, looking after up-and-coming UK talent, and he is also in two other bands, Krokodil and Moones, and busy making music for short films.

This new-found freedom has found its way into the music Gallows is now creating – Desolation Sounds is bleakly beautiful, weighty and affecting. Co-produced and recorded by Steve Sears at Titan Studios in Watford, it builds on the aggression and passion of the band’s acclaimed catalogue – 2006’s Orchestra of Wolves, Grey Britain in 2009, and Gallows in 2012, their first with Wade at the helm – while opening up new horizons for the quartet.

“Now that there’s not this intense, full-time business feel, we can experiment with ideas we’ve always wanted to try and not worry about the consequences so much,” says Lags.

“Gallows has always been about the rage and the fast, energetic, aggressive music – with this album we keep some of those elements, the dark side of what we do, and we’re putting it into more introspective, softer, sort of soundscape-y music.

“There’s a track on there called Cease to Exist that’s quite slow and restrained but it’s also very dark and menacing. We’ve never really done anything like that before. It’s opening us up to a whole new collection of fans who could discover our music and never expect to like it in the way that punks or hardcore kids would like it.

“We’ve taken everything that Gallows is about but we’ve taken it in some new directions.”

Desolation Sounds is out now.

Gallows play Slam Dunk festival in Hatfield on May 24, and The Garage in Highbury on May 26. Details: gallows.co.uk