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While some bands age clumsily, stretching their bodies and their voices a few decades too far, others, like Unsane, grow into their sound perfectly.

In its formative years during the 1980s, noise rock was slower, meatier, and more morose than the punk from which it evolved. At its root, the genre is a response to, and is a reflection of, the weariness that comes from being worn down by the world’s cruelty. It’s a style that suits a group of grumpy older men for whom mortality looms ever closer.

Unsane were a thrillingly deafening prospect even when they were fresher-faced boys; now, their battered bodies and brains are in (im)perfect sync with their surly sound on Sterilize. The trio’s career has been more focused on honing their dense music than undertaking any ill-advised stylistic reinventions. Whereas prior Unsane albums had their obvious stand-out moments, there is little point in singling out any specific tracks for praise this time around; every bleakly rampaging track proves as powerful as the last.

Throughout, Dave Curran and Vincent Signorelli steamroll any rival noise-rock rhythm section into surrender. Chris Spencer’s virulent riffs add to the effect, while his growled lyrics cover a whole gamut of hopelessness: misery, delusion, corporate greed, history’s sick habit of repeating itself, running out of time, running out of breath, running ever towards oblivion.

—JR Moores