Ritual de lo Habitual

Recording began in mid-1989. Dave Jerden and Perry Farrell are credited as producers, with Ronnie S. Champagne and Bob Lacivita on engineering, and Eddy Schreyer mastered it. The record falls into two halves. Tracks one to five are unrelated hard rock songs, on subjects that include stealing in Been Caught Stealing and anti-racism in No One's Leaving. In the second half, Three Days and Then She Did... lean toward progressive rock, and Of Course has a klezmer feel, with Charlie Bisharat on violin.

Avery declined to play bass on Of Course after resenting being told what to play on other songs. Champagne played it instead, and Avery later said he regretted not playing on it. The credits list Geoff Stradling on piano, John Philip Shenale on strings and Cindy Lair as the spoken voice on Stop!. The sculpture used on one version of the cover was made by Niccoli and Farrell, and relates to the song Three Days.

Stop! and Three Days came out as singles on 2 August 1990, and Been Caught Stealing followed in November. The album peaked at 19 on the Billboard 200, sold half a million copies within a month and was certified 2x Platinum. Farrell later said the thirteen-month tour behind it was half the reason the members could not stand each other. Peter Kane of Q singled out the swerve and swagger of Stop and the epic Three Days, and Select ranked it fifth among the best albums of the 1990s. It came 24th in the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll for 1990 and 453rd in Rolling Stone's 2003 list, and it is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Alice Cooper said in 1994 that it was their peak album.