PRESS
Richard Quinlan, Jersey Beat
Ritual Tension’s reformation fabricates their first LP in 31 years. The trio returns three of four 1986-1990 members—singer Ivan Nahem, bassist Marc Sloan snd drummer Michael Shockley, and missing Nahem’s brother Andrew, now their sleeve artist— and Mark C. provides some engineering. Given that combined experience,
Apocalypse realizes a post-punk continuum from 1986’s I Live Here and 1989’s Expelled. The memorable high-treble bass, big tom drums, and high pitched guitar (see “Tightrope”) return in “Come Back, Come Back” and “Monsters Are Real.” Likewise, Nahem growls, shouts, and spews like Tom Waits and ex-Radio Birdman Deniz Tek, expressing the malicious, McDonalds-slogan mocking “I’m Loving It” and the desperately-seeking-free-alcohol “I Can’t Find the Party”. Covers of 1967 Are You Experienced waltz “Main Depression” and the MC5’s 1970 Back in the USA boogie, “Shakin’ Street” come Tension style, a la their 1987 takedown of the Eagles 1977 #1 “Hotel California”. Wild!
Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover
We made number 11!
Early 80s New York was cheap and crazy fun, so 100 punk/post-punk/hardcore/art rock/noise/no wave/krautrock/dance-funk bands cross-pollinated—you could see a gig every night. Like Mike Gira’s Circus Mort and Thurston Moore’s Coachmen, Carnival Crash deserves remembrance for great music, not just what they did later (Ivan Nahem to Ritual Tension, Norman Westberg to Swans, James Lo to Live Skull and Chavez; Live Skull’s Tom Paine also guests; he and Marc C. had been in San Francisco’s Crop with Nahem.) I remember seeing them at 15th Street’s Tramps —also where I caught Circus Mort, what a barclub!— playing their Joy Division/Gang of Four/99/Fast Product post -Talking Heads white-funk patterns and Westberg’s jagged, peeling guitar lines. Having left just one rare single released after their 1982 split, It Is a Happy Man excavates a version of that with unheard tracks from the 1981-1982 sessions. It’ll make you wish they would reunite like Ritual Tension has since 2017. Available obelisk-records.com.
Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover
Part of the downtown grit-and-grimace crowd, Ritual Tension bears substantial comparison to both rat at rat r and Live Skull both in ability and their overall sound. While the rhythm section kicks along aggressively, Andrew Nahem's guitar expressionistically -- dense and abrasive in spots, or at times following rhythms and riffs. Ivan Nahem's vocals are the real show, sometimes amusing, sometimes poetic, and often surreal. It's a string vision, though the impact is lessened somewhat by the number of similar bands from NYC working the same sonic turf.
Beth L., Option
Odd that folk think of them as a "noise" band, consider considering the razor tight precision of the rhythm team: hard as death, twice as swift. Bring to a boil, a guitar for texture, but most definitely not rhythm guitar. Lead guitar you mean? Nuh-uh. Something separate from the two, elements of both. Sprinkle snippets of dialogue from David Lynch's version of Taxi Driver, then try to fit this peg in your square hole, Mr. Greenjeans. Just lovely.
Impossible to categorize, oblivious to convention, at points it approaches being a rock record, although from a hitherto unexplored direction. Probably the best rhythm section in New York City. You ain't heard like this. But you'll be glad when you have.
Art Black, Away From the Pulsebeat
This is music at the end of its tether, trapped, bored, dangerous. They shout of New York lowlife, but it's not the lovable bozos of Tom Waits. They're on a long leash but holding it themselves. Ritual Tension are people you genuinely would not want to meet down any dark alley. You even feel uneasy with them on your turntable. Magnificent.
Melody Maker
Ritual Tension: I Live Here (Sacrifice) "Here" is the lower side and they're talking to (or yelling at) you, Ms. Social Climber -- or, more generally, Person Who Doesn't Live on the Lower East Side. Surprisingly, this parochial approach is good for music a lot more intense and universal than, to choose the relevant example, the Bush Tetras' "Too Many Creeps." Unsurprisingly, it's also good for doomy drivel. B Minus
Robert Christgau, The Village Voice
Ritual Tension is caught up in a tumultuous post-punk maelstrom. Guitars cut through like piercing irritants, the drums pound staccato patterns, shrieks, rasps and hellish creaks are strewn about-- the Birthday Party's horrific blues has had an influence here. When Ivan Nahem sings, "There's a dead beast in your driver seat... No, no, that's just my relative," with a nervous, evil tremor, you're damn well ready to believe him. "Social Climber" is a vicious swipe at NYC nightclub denizens. "Hire a Thug" slashes out at money grabbing bigshots. "The Wrong Tack" and "Tied to the Mast" are more like a tortured poet's nightmares than songs. New York can be a terrifying and dangerous place, to which I Live Here is powerful testimony.
CMJ New Music Report
Powerful but surprisingly melodic tunes based around the tortured ravings of the two Nahem brothers. Big and bald Ivan sings like he means it. Andrew plays guitar with the sort of loathing for his instrument that Pete Townsend used to have.
Scunthorpe Target
New York’s most underestimated noise-generators, the aptly-named Ritual Tension succeed on the unique interplay between four phenomenal musicians, goading their abberrant songs into complex twists and turns that lodge firmly in your subconscious. The Blood Of The Kid/Live at CBGB’s LP, one of the two new releases, features first LP stunners like “Tightrope” and “Hire a Thug”. The studio EP Hotel California is a brilliant disembowelment of the Eagles oldie.
The Island Ear
This band has a unique style and unique vision. Take the title track, the old Eagles song done in a stark, aggressive and totally un-Cal manner. It's a disturbing cut. "The Grind" likewise features Nahem's strong vocal presence, which dominates the droning output of the rhythm section. This is dance music for the after hours crowd, a soundtrack for a dark generation
Option
Ritual Tension's cover of the Eagles' classic (?) could be their vision of the rotting, decaying corpse of the 70s, as they leave it slowly dangling in the wind, to be scrutinized in excruciating detail over eight minutes. I'd love to force Eagles fans to hear this one. "The Grind" also lives up to its name, slow and churning guitar sparks, a molten rhythm, expressive vocals, creating a cauldron of sound that's scary as hell. Monstrous.
Suburban Voice
Turned my bowels into chum chowder. A wicked creation such as this makes it far more bearable to deal with the demise of Big Black. Thanks for the bad memories.
Ink Disease
There have been opinions, such as the following.
Now, with [Norman] Westberg, Mark C. (pre-Live Skull, Ivan’s bandmate in Crop), Cucumbers’ Jon Fried, brother Andrew guesting, Nahem uses his experience as a new age yoga instructor for an instrumental soundtrack to perk up classes. This is not Krishna Das singing “ooooom” at an ashram; on “The Sea, The Beach, The Jungle” it’s Middle Eastern/carnival-darker, but otherwise it’s spiritual soundings for the sensual. It’s hushed, tranquil but lush, with elongated tones, quiet note chiming, whistling, light keyboards, brushed guitars, etc. Like Mayazaki music, it’s a rainforest beneath a storm.
Jack Rabid, The Big Takeover
When noise rockers plug into different sockets: The new solo album by Ivan Nahem from New York, who has been involved in shaping the electric guitar-driven noise music in various bands and projects from Ritual Tension, Carnival Crash to Swans since the late seventies, promotes a surprisingly different side of the yoga teacher comes to light: Crawling Through Grass is ambient, and anyone who knows ambient broadly knows that this chilled musical variety can also contain noise, only softer, often disguised as a drone, mixed with field recordings and improvisations, by no means a boring sound carpet, and that's exactly how it is with this album.
Matze Van Bauseneick, Krautnick Magazine
Translated by Google
Ritual Tension is a band with its roots firmly planted in the punk, no-wave, and noise scenes of the very late 1970s in San Francisco before moving to NYC in the early 1980s… Now, thirty years after their final performance, Ritual Tension has returned, this time sans Andrew, as a trio on the experimental and wonderfully noisy It’s Just the Apocalypse, It’s Not the End. Ritual Tension never abandoned their artistic interpretation of what punk rock can be, and It’s Just the Apocalypse, It’s Not the End is a free-flowing and fearless display of confidence from a collection of players who have refused, thankfully, to surrender to any expectations other than their own. The world needs more from acts like Ritual Tension right now.
Rich Quinlan, Jersey Beat
Almost out of the blue, the experimental New York no-wave trio Ritual Tension has gotten together again to make a new statement about time and the world: It's Just The Apocalypse, It's Not The End is the title of the first album since the Eighties. And it sounds as if neither time nor the world has passed: dirty fuzz rock… sweeping energy, unique structures with the songs catchy at the same time - so fat!
Matze Van Bauseneick, Krautnick Magazine
Translated by Google
CARNIVAL CRASH - It is a Happy Man (Obelisk-records.com)
For anyone familiar with Ritual Tension - and if you are not, you should be - should recognize Carnival Crash. Led by wildly talented Ivan Nahem, the band had a tragically brief shelf life, but their contributions were plentiful and celebratory. The band’s fugacious time together resulted in two critical record sessions captured in this seven-song compilation. The opening “Tell Tale Heart”, a track originally released in 1982 by Ivan under the name “Ivan X” as the B-side to “Edge of Night”, is a bold blast of first generation post punk. The song features an unsettling beat accented by jarring guitar, blending Joy Division’s darkness and shards of New Wave’s energy. “Edge of Night” is a rumbustious anthem that is centered around a heavy low-end groove from John Griffin and elevated to greatness through Norman Westberg’s distinctive guitar squall, a talent which he brought to Swans after the demise of Carnival Crash. It is easy to find one’s self lost in the emotive, atmospheric din the band creates, but one cannot overlook Ivan Nahem’s vocals. While his drumming shines through on “Method 1”, his singing is integral to completing the trenchant noise-rock brilliance of Carnival Crash. Whether coming across as simultaneously imposing and thoughtful on ‘Edge of Night” or reserved and grounded on “Nostalgia”, his delivery completes the mystical nature of the band. Listening to It is a Happy Man is more than a return to the gritty streets of New York City at the dawn of the 1980s, for it is an education about where rock was at that time. The first generation of punks had burned out and New Wave was already showing signs of fading away, therefore bands were free to experiment wildly and ignore any particular label or genre expectations. Carnival Crash meshed controlled chaos with touches of beauty to redefine rock’s limitations at the time. It would be nice to see that type of courage rewarded today.
Manhattan’s Ritual Tension attack at full throttle with scraping guitars, tense rhythms, subtle dynamics, and literally deranged vocals. I live here is abrasive, modern musik for the open minded consumer, highlighted by the unnervingly hypnotic "Tightrope".
Greg Fasolino, Rockpool
If the Swans, Sonic Youth and Live Skull turn your head, this LP will spin it completely around. It's hot, children. It's Beefheart, Beethoven, Birthday Party and Charles Ives rolled together. It's difficult to categorize. It's even harder to take off your turntable.
Lou Gerard, Jet Lag
Not really like anything I've heard before, Ritual Tension makes music that suggest both mitteleuropisch keening and c&w dirges. The result is an almost tangible mood of impending doom or apparent threats surpassing most "death rock" for sheer dread. It's cowpunk distorted into a weapon with a blade like a scythe.
Paul Bubny, Aquarian Weekly
The tension wires of sound and imagery, both geared holy to a critique of modern ways, at times recall PiL’s more variant work, but really Ritual Tension are answerable only to themselves, not to history.
Sounds
This is actually a classic moment in the history of rock music. Rarely has any band tortured or twisted a 70s rock standard to such extremes. The total antithesis of the spirit parentheses that laid back, West Coast attitude (inherent in the tune, script to its embarrassed essentials, anger oozing from every angle. String strangler Andrew Nahem stretches bizarre sounds up and down the neck like bugs crawling over naked bodies. Vocalist Ivan Nahem is a real natural. The Quartet have done a fine job of producing themselves, especially the background vocals. The rhythm team is no less powerful. A totally harrowing experience. If I wasn't so tough, I'd have a hard time dealing with this disk.
Jersey Beat
As is commonplace with these festivals, Ritual Tension from the lower east side did not have their drummer with them. Still, they ripped through one of them more distinctive sets as just a trio -- Marc Sloan on bass, an electric guitar, and an odd-looking older skinhead in a cowboy hat as lead vocalist. They were tight, with well rehearsed gloomy dirges, almost Beefheartian in their unexpected twists and changes of texture. The music was very suspenseful and mysterious, a combination of controlled dentist-drill guitar with well-chosen bass-scapes and hip anguished vocal extremes.
Bruce Lee Gallanter, Jersey Beat
Today people are talking and critics are writing about a new downtown rock scene, focusing on several bands that are widely perceived to constitute a trend or movement. Sonic Youth, Live Skull and Swans are most often mentioned in this connection, but Ritual Tension, rat at rat r and the London-based but New York rooted trio Ut also belong on the list. All these bands have new albums available [and] have a rising energy about them, suggesting that they haven't begun to peak. Perhaps that's the most important thing they have in common: the sense that, with their common roots and shared assumptions, they're all just beginning to define their own sounds, still discovering how far they can go and what they can do, as bands and as individual contributors. Following their development is going to be a pleasure.
Robert Palmer, The New York Times
A pulsating, stark excursion. Ritual Tension share a kinship with live skull and Sonic Youth by virtue of their a tonality and abrasiveness, yet it's more precise and the effect is more immediate. “The Wrong Tack” is chilling with humming guitar and Ivan's soliloquy. “Tightrope,” with a loping baseline, drill-bit guitar passages and a superb vocal performance has an equal effect. Uneasy music, yet with a seductive quality.
Suburban Voice