Twenty years after its original release, Neil Leyton’s third solo album, The Betrayal of the Self, returns in a 20th anniversary edition, newly remastered by Florian Siller. The re-issue is out digitally on November 21st, 2026 via European Phonographic.
The album takes its title from The Betrayal of the Self: The Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women (Der Verrat am Selbst, 1984), a book by the German-born Swiss psychologist and psychoanalyst Arno Gruen, whose work deeply influenced Leyton at the time. Gruen argued that when children learn to deny their own feelings and perceptions in order to adapt to the expectations of those with power over them, they lose touch with their true selves, a loss he connected to obedience, the hunger for power and the inability to feel empathy.
Those ideas run through the songs, and through the handwritten questions scrawled across the cover: how do you see yourself in the world when confronted by the reality of interactions with other people, religions or races? Culture?
Recorded at Acetone in Stockholm and first released in 2006 via Fading Ways and Feedback Boogie, the album features guest appearances by The Hellacopters’ Nicke Andersson and Backyard Babies guitarist Dregen, as well as Micke Ghost, who toured extensively with Leyton between 2005 and 2008 and later joined him in founding Lusitanian Ghosts.
The Betrayal of the Self (20th Anniversary Edition, remastered by Florian Siller) · European Phonographic · out November 21st, 2026
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