"the last night is the hardest" is probably the biggest disappointment that I've had while working as Mara's Torment. It's one of those self-indulgent albums about being in love with somebody who isn't quite so in love with you. And as with all of those sorts of albums, the songs written for it are all very intimate reflections of my feelings at the time, a really naked portrait of what was happening to me. I was having terrible angst over this one, really stressing over the way it was going, the way it was headed. I spent well over a year working on it, and for most of that time it nearly sucked the life out of me. Well, that and the whole love thing associated with it... anyway, I eventually reached a point where I decided that I couldn't go any further with it, that I had to stop working on it, 'cause it was becoming more labor than a labor of love. So I recorded what I had, three times, but through a variety of technical problems I was left with a really substandard recording that couldn't be released. I thought of trying again, but a lack of funds made that impossible, and so I decided that it'd be better to just give up on this collection of songs. The long and short of it is that this album, much like the romance it's based on, was never meant to be. Despite that, I've recently collected a number of demos and cleaned them up enough that they could be presented as a rough idea of what the album might have been like had it ever been finished. It's only a hint of what was meant to be, but I see it as having merit as a moment in time for me as a musician. For this release I've added the cover artwork, done by the very brilliant Katie Miranda who did a fabulous job as always of capturing the spirit of the music, giving image to it. She's so awesome. By all means go visit her site at http://www.theopticnerve.com