album's release, Michael Shockley replaced Jio. The next recording with Bisi was the 1987 EP Hotel California, released by Safe House Records. It featured an eight-minute cover of the title song by the Eagles, a deconstruction and salute to their roots by the Nahem brothers, who grew up in the Bay Area. It also included Ritual Tension's signature song, "The Grind". The EP and the debut were also reissued together by Sacrifice as I Live Here/Hotel California. As the band gained popularity in the East Village scene, playing clubs like The Ritz, Pyramid Club and The Bottom Line, they came to the attention of CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, leading to headliner slots and a live "Off the Board" album recorded in 1986 at CBGB, titled The Blood of the Kid and released in 1987 by CBGB/Celluloid Records. Expelled was their final studio album, again recorded with Bisi and released in 1989 by Safe House. The group disbanded in 1990, but played a final reunion performance in Hoboken, New Jersey in May 1993. Past Tense, a 15-track collection of Ritual Tension material, was issued on Sacrifice in 1999. In 2016, Ivan and Andrew Nahem began working at the studio of Michael Jung's Hizhaus Recording, remixing their early song "All Wound Up" originally recorded at Noise New York with Frank Eaton engineer, as well as rediscovered tapes of recordings by Carnival Crash, which would become the Obelisk Records Carnival Crash release It Is a Happy Man in the fall, 2020. In 2017, Ivan Nahem began working on a project with Pittsburgh noise artist Gregg Bielski that came to be called ex->tension. Bielski initially asked Nahem to put spoken word vocals atop his soundtracks, and eventually the latter's Ritual Tension bandmates were enlisted for separate collaborations, with Andrew Nahem's guitar on three tracks and Sloan and Shockley contributing to one track each. The resulting album, The Kiss, was released on RORER 714 Records (and subsequently re-issued in Japan by the Meditation label of Ichiro Tsuji of the band Dissecting Table). This was followed by performances by Ivan Nahem and Gregg Bielski with other members of Ritual Tension, which in turn led to a reformation of Ritual Tension in late 2017, without guitarist Andrew Nahem. They played their first reunion date at Century in Philadelphia on February 23, 2018. This was followed by a show at SideWalk Cafe in New York City on March