Mark Behn feels Malice’s album ‘License To Kill’ was a much better sounding record than their debut
Ex-Malice bassist Mark Behn was recently interviewed by Konstantin Chilikin for Symphonies of Steel. Malice released the albums, In The Beginning… (1985), License To Kill (1987) and Crazy In The Night EP (1989), before disbanding for the first time.
In terms of what lessons that the Malice band members learned from their debut album In The Beginning… that they applied to their follow up record License To Kill, Behn indicated:
“Well, what we learned from the first album and all those mistakes probably made it a better album the second time. So we said we wanted Max Norman and they said, “Well, maybe not”. We said, “We want Max Norman”. And they go, “Well, maybe”. We said “We want Max Norman”. “OK, Max Norman”. Why didn’t we do that with the first album? So Max came in and he was just spot on with what we needed. First of all, we respected him tremendously because of his Ozzy stuff and everything he had done. And he came in and he was just so well prepared. He had been sending demo tapes of many of the songs and he had had the notes and time signatures and all this kind of stuff. So when he came in, he was just very comprehensive and very intelligent. This is the guy you want to steer your ship. And it was just a great experience from the very beginning. I wished he had done the first album. First of all, it sounded better. Second of all, it had more continuity because Max was so good with sonic value as well as arrangements. He was really good at helping us, take it to the next extra level. We had these raw ideas and he’d say, “Just bring me the raw ideas. We’ll structure them”. And so that interaction was really great. We all liked working with Max and he had such a high level of performance, too. His ear is so good. You play something, and he says, “I think you can do it better than that”. And you play it again. You know, you brought that out of all of us.”
On whether Malice‘s record label pushed the band to play more commercial sounding songs, Behn stated: “You know, that was always in there. That probably went from record company to management, and then management diffused it a bit before it came to us. Because, you know, as with all artists, it’s not going to settle well. That’s what all artists go through: Black Sabbath, Rush, they all went through it. Like the record company comes in and says, “Hey, you’re going to need to write stuff that’s going to be played on the radio”. And we all know it’s a stupid idea to try to write something for the radio. You have to write what’s in your heart and what’s in your head and do it to the best of your ability. You don’t conceive what somebody might like. You write what you like. So we didn’t get that directly from the record company. I think it might have come in in some channels from management. They might have said, “You guys got anything lighter, not quite so heavy?” They might have said that, but it just went by us. “Well, no, we write what we write”.”
In terms of how he rates Malice‘s first two records, Behn opined: “Yeah, I would probably side with your opinion that they’re both to me special because they’re in my heart. But sonically, “License to Kill” was such a better sounding album. And I always find myself wishing that “In the beginning…”. There would be times where I would be driving in my car and I would tune the stereo so it sounds better, like pump up the bass and take the volume way up and stuff. If that album sounded as good as “License to Kill”, those songs would be even more powerful.”
You can read the rest of the interview with Mark Behn via Symphonies of Steel‘s website.