Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week features vintage hardcore punk by Minus9, synth-pop by Same Eyes, electronic body music by zagc, black metal by Gossamer, and trip-hop by Benji Robot.

Minus9, Beasts Pt.1
This Ypsilanti grind-punk bass-and-drums duo takes me back to 1986 when I hosted a three-band concert in my parents' garage—and not just because Minus9 bassist-yeller Andrew Claydon played guitar in two of those Michigan groups: the excellent, long-lost hardcore band Public Noise from Brighton and The Herb Tarlicks, a jokey punk group from Dexter (I think).

The flashback happened while listening to Beasts Pt. 1, the fourth album by Minus9 and its first since 2015.

The way Claydon and drummer Steve Marton play and their song structures sound like early 1980s American hardcore, completely skipping the later eras that incorporated vocal cadences from rap and the bombast of metal. The 11 songs on Beasts Pt. 1 range from 30 seconds to just over a half-minute—and they all rage with Cold War anxiety, which still feels apt in 2023. Claydon's simple lyrics cover death, war, and mocks meatheads—classic hardcore tropes—which he belts with a smart-ass snarl. And just to drive home Minus9's retro-modern connection, while musically the song "Where Seagulls Dare" doesn't sound like The Misfits' 1979 classic "Where Eagles Dare," the title is obviously a pun on it. 

My dad still lives in the house I grew up in, and I'm ready to clean out his garage again and put on a show. Minus9 will be headlining, obviously.

Same Eyes, "Reframed"
Ann Arbor's Same Eyes is releasing a single a month throughout 2023, and "Reframed" is another great synth-pop song. I feel like I say "great song" every time I write about Same Eyes, but there isn't a clunker in the band's catalog. Singer Alex Hughes has really found his voice here, too, calming some of the deep-voiced melodramatics (which I love) and crooning in a higher range. RIYL: When in Rome's "The Promise" and Camoflage's "The Great Commandment."

zagc, "The Darkness of Future Past"
This song is the follow-up to zagc's December 2022 album, Horse, and it continues the Ann Arbor artist's exploration of industrial EBM. Hard-edge techno with a menacing presence.

Gossamer, The Culling of Crones
Washtenaw is severely lacking in metal and hardcore bands for a county that is awash in young people due to the universities and colleges—one of which even has a fraternity nicknamed Metal Frat. Enter Ann Arbor black-metal duo Gossamer, comprised of the pseudonymous Gauntlet and Nadir, who played and wrote everything on The Culling of Crones, the group's studio debut following a 2021 demo, Beneath the Ashen Cloak of Time. The album is dedicated to those who have suffered from wars, and the nine songs are meant to evoke the horror of the battlefields through double-time drums, fast on-off switch guitar strumming, and growled vocals. More metal, please.

Benji Robot, Trying to be Better EP
Ann Arbor's Benjamin Roman is Benji Robot, and this fab two-song EP could have come out on the Mo' Wax label 30 years ago. Downtempo trip/glitch-hop.

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.