I'm experiencing this issue when attempting to install the latest Liquorix kernel that I've been using for years.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description:	Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS
Release:	14.04

$ apt-cache policy dpkg
dpkg:
  Installed: 1.17.5ubuntu5.7
  Candidate: 1.17.5ubuntu5.7
  Version table:
 *** 1.17.5ubuntu5.7 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.17.5ubuntu5.6 0
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security/main amd64 Packages
     1.17.5ubuntu5 0

$ sudo apt full-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64
  linux-image-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64
The following packages will be upgraded:
  linux-headers-liquorix-amd64 linux-image-liquorix-amd64
2 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/57.4 MB of archives.
After this operation, 280 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Supported
Create a snapshot of '/tmp/apt-btrfs-snapshot-mp-21ujpnev/@' in '/tmp/apt-btrfs-snapshot-mp-21ujpnev/@apt-snapshot-2017-11-19_17:41:21'
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg-deb: error: archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb' has premature member 'control.tar.xz' before 'control.tar.gz', giving up
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
dpkg-deb: error: archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb' has premature member 'control.tar.xz' before 'control.tar.gz', giving up
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
dpkg-deb: error: archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb' has premature member 'control.tar.xz' before 'control.tar.gz', giving up
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
dpkg-deb: error: archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb' has premature member 'control.tar.xz' before 'control.tar.gz', giving up
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
                                                              Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-4.13.0-13.1-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-liquorix-amd64_4.13-7_amd64.deb
[ Rootkit Hunter version 1.4.0 ]
File updated: searched for 169 files, found 138
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)