Invisible ASPS

Like a harder version of early Skinny Puppy, the songs on Built Better by Betrayal, the latest release from Invisible ASPS, bear out the title well. If these tunes weren’t born out of anger and bitterness and a desire to purge those feelings, it would be surprising, because even the first track, “Need vs. Love,” burns with a sense of, well, betrayal on a close and personal level. “You crossed a line that never should have been crossed,” Aron Beatty sings with naked disdain. “Where I Stand” has a touch of Middle Eastern flavor in its tonal choices, and it creeps along, with Beatty’s whispered vocals outlining mutual offenses between a first-person narrator and an ex-friend or -lover. This album is the exorcism of a deep psychic pain, expressed in seething whispers and pulsating beats amid claustrophobic atmospheres.