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The Hard Road

from Awakenings by MGR

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“The Hard Road” is a fairly obscure MGR track, as it only ever appeared on a Robotic Empire Bandcamp compilation called “Blood” on September 29, 2014. Of note, this song effectively marks the transition from MGR taking a rather minimalistic approach to composition and arrangement and exploding out into more traditional rock band arrangements. Joining Mike Gallagher on this recording were Josh Graham (Red Sparowes, Battle of Mice, Neurosis), Josh Holt (Asa, U.S. Christmas, Generation of Vipers), and BJ Graves (also of U.S. Christmas, Generation of Light). This is the only known track featuring this lineup, as 2016’s “Becoming” would feature entirely different players (save for Gallagher, of course).

Compositionally, the track is poetic in presenting the evolution of the project in an almost meta sense, as it begins with a section that wouldn’t be out of place on “Wavering on the Cresting Heft” and other minimal selections from the back catalog. But right around the 3-minute mark, drums start counting in new players, who then proceed to fill up much of the space that was previously left untouched in MGR recordings to that point. And indeed, after a decade of a particular motif, the bombast toward the end of “The Hard Road” signaled a clarion call to what MGR was now “Becoming."

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from Awakenings, released September 27, 2023

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MGR Los Angeles, California

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