The best-aging band of punk rock’s Class of ’77, Wire have radically transformed their sound with almost every album, from hardcore miniatures to synthesizer jolts to clattering one-chord jams and beyond. This latest self-reinvention was unavoidable—guitarist and texturalist-in-chief Bruce Gilbert quit after 2003’s Send. (“One of Us,” which opens this brisk 35-minute disc, is a kiss-off to a nameless collaborator, and an exception to the detached warnings that usually comprise their lyrics.) Now a trio of tough old guys, they’ve looped back to their late-’80s mode: dry, mechanical grooves topped with cooling-lava noise. Singer-guitarist Colin Newman has a sideline in electronic music, and this incarnation of Wire stacks up strobing patterns of rock instruments and voices the way techno producers use synthesizers. Even when Wire slow way down, their densely layered riffs reward wall-shaking volumes.

DOWNLOAD “One of Us,” “Patient Flees,” “Are You Ready?”