When I first heard the adrenalin rush of those guitars at the start of Girl From Mars, I was instantly transported back to the first wave of punk in 1977.

Little wonder then that Ash named their debut album after punk’s Year Zero, when two of the trio – front man Tim Wheeler and drummer Rick McMurray – were born.

Wheeler wrote the song when he was 16 and they made their debut on Top of the Pops two weeks after sitting their A-levels.

That first barrage of singles – this was their fifth in the space of a year – could easily have burst out of Northern Ireland’s original punk scene alongside The Undertones and Starjets.

With those buzzsaw guitars married to pop melodies, Ash sounded like a fusion of those two bands, yet were young enough to be their children.

And now here they are, marking the 30th anniversary of the debut album that spawned those other earworms Goldfinger, Kung Fu and Oh Yeah. And, dammit, they don’t look as if they’re even middle-aged.

The song has the same adrenalin rush as it did three decades ago, the gentle acoustic jangle and almost a capella lyric followed by the thunderous crash of the drums and that maelstrom of bass and guitar.