The Dead Boys may be the most misunderstood band in a misunderstood sub-sub-genre of rock ’n’ roll — namely, ’70s American punk rock.

Though its members all hailed from Cleveland, the five-piece band is most associated with the original punk boom in New York City and bands such as the Ramones, Television, The Heartbreakers and Blondie. As with those bands, The Dead Boys developed a distinct sound. While the grinding guitars, snappy hooks and snotty vocals heard on classic anthems such as “Sonic Reducer” and “All This and More” superficially had much in common with the Ramones, The Dead Boys took its nihilistic lyrics and stage show to often violent extremes, with lead vocalist Stiv Bators cutting himself up onstage Iggy Pop-style.

By the end of the band’s short run in 1979, synthesizers and new wave were all the rage, and The Dead Boys, according to founding guitarist and co-leader Cheetah Chrome (born Eugene O’Connor), “became a dinosaur band.” Things came to a head after drummer Johnny Blitz was stabbed multiple times in the chest in 1978, with the band breaking off into different factions, Chrome said.

“We got back out on the road, and Jimmy (Zero, guitarist) and Stiv had been going and writing songs together, and all of a sudden, oh, here’s all these power-pop songs, which wasn’t my idea of The Dead Boys, either,” Chrome said from his home in Nashville, a few days before the reconstituted Dead Boys hit the road for its latest round of touring in celebration of the 40th anniversary of debut album “Young, Loud and Snotty.” The group will make its Bend debut at the Domino Room on Tuesday.

“Seymour (Stein, co-founder of The Dead Boys’ original record label, Sire Records) called us back and said that he thought that we needed to — in order to continue our relationship with Sire Records, that we should probably change our music, change our image and possibly change the name of the band,” Chrome continued. “I just looked at him like he was nuts, and then there was another (band) member that actually said, ‘What do you mean, Seymour?’ And I just looked at him and said, ‘You’re expressing interest in this s—? That’s not the guy you were when this band started.’”

Of course, the members of the reformed Dead Boys have changed in the ensuing decades (and some are new people entirely). Amidst an active solo career and session work in the ’80s and ’90s, Chrome battled drug addiction before sobering up and moving to Nashville to start a family about 18 years ago.

But according to Chrome, the important stuff remains the same. The reformed Dead Boys — Chrome, Blitz, vocalist Jake Hout (Bators died after being hit by a taxi in Paris in 1990), guitarist Jason Kottwitz and bassist Ricky Rat — got together in 2017 to re-record “Young, Loud and Snotty” (released as “Still Snotty: Young, Loud and Snotty at 40”) and began touring again. After successful shows across the globe, the band is looking ahead to recording new material.

“We haven’t cleaned up our act any; we don’t want to go gentle; we don’t want to go try to sound like anything other than what we are,” Chrome said. “We’ve just gotta go sit down and play those songs and see what they sound like.”

This version of The Dead Boys grew out of Chrome’s solo band, which includes Blitz and Kottwitz; Hout and Rat played in tribute band The Undead Boys.

“For the most part, the only people who have been people that put a downer on (Hout’s involvement) were singers who were hoping for the gig,” Chrome said with a laugh. “… Otherwise everybody seems to think that he fits the bill good. Jimmy, he can’t tour right now — I wish he could, but he’s not in the health to tour. We would love to have him on with us, but he can’t, and Jason is a very good fill-in for him. And (original bassist) Jeff Magnum didn’t really ever fit in in the first band, really.”

Live, the new band has focused on “Young, Loud and Snotty,” though songs from 1978’s sophomore album “We Have Come for Your Children” have also made recent set lists. That album, famously looked down upon by the band, had a difficult gestation period — at one point, Chrome wanted Lou Reed to record the band performing the songs live, but Sire and Stein balked at the suggestion.

“(Reed) loved The Dead Boys; he thought we were a great band, and he thought we had the potential to do something really, really good,” Chrome said. “And it was a bitter disappointment to me he didn’t do it, and he even did a budget. He went through a lot of problems to do it. And then when it got turned down, after that I saw him — you know, ‘Hey, man, how you doing?’ — he kind of brushed me off. I was pissed off because here I lost a friend.”

The reunion follows an ill-fated attempt with Bators in the late ’80s and a few one-off shows in the mid-2000s. And before reassembling The Dead Boys, Chrome and Blitz helped spearhead a reunion of their first band, Rocket from the Tombs (which splintered into The Dead Boys and Pere Ubu in the mid-’70s). Chrome, Blitz and Television guitarist Richard Lloyd, who replaced late Rocket from the Tombs and Pere Ubu guitarist Peter Laughner, would leave that reunion in 2011.

Plowboy recently signed Lloyd, and Chrome teased a possible collaboration between the two. He said he’s also open to working with Rocket from the Tombs again in some capacity. But for now, his focus is squarely on The Dead Boys’ new music and upcoming tours, including a European jaunt next year.

“The new band’s been together, hell, almost as long as the old band was at this point — I mean, it’s going on two, three years,” Chrome said. “We get along better and we play better, we’re just as tight. It’s not the old band. I’m not putting down the old band — there was something very special about the original Dead Boys — but what we’re doing here is both a tribute to The Dead Boys, but just also with eyes on moving forward and doing new material and having it be a real band again.”