In the Beginning...

Released in 1985 by Atlantic and produced in part by metal meistro Max Norman, this album deserved a much richer fate than it ultimately received.

There are moments throughout this recording, many, many moments in fact, when it sounds as though this is a Judas Priest recording in every detail. I am certain some Priest fans could be fooled into thinking this is an unreleased Priest CD, the sound is so similar, especially singer James Neal's voice, compared to Rob Halford.

The songs are all very strong heavy riff oriented. They are primarily up tempo musically, with excellent vocals that tend to live in the upper register, as was virtually required by metal singers at the time.

I saw Malice live in New York and they killed as greatly live as they did in the studio. Their failure to really take off is probably due to the fact that 1985 was the metal heyday and there were literally so many metal bands releasing records, they got caught in the glut. Additionally, Atlantic was very strong metal-wise, but chose to promote drek like Ratt over Malice.

Highlights on the CD are album opener "Rockin' With You", the Priest clone tune "Air Attack", "Hellrider", "No Haven For The Raven", "The Unwanted" and the completely stellar "Godz of Thunder", which features incredible lyrics like "Pentagram drawn out in blood, I am bound by the greed of a thirsty god, help me, is there no end to eternity, set me free, from the chains of hells infernity"! Yes, that's right, "infernity" - eternal inferno, one of the two new words James Neal added to the English language. The other word being "fantacide" (death by fantasy) on their followup album.

"In The Beginning" is a supurb CD by a band that just didn't get the breaks they needed, although they deserved them.

Fucking brutal 80's heavy metal. This album kicks your ass and comes back for more..er that is if you like to headbang! Like Boris mentioned in his review, most of this album is pretty forgetable. To me a lot of the riffs and such sounded the same. It is very inconsistent! Sometimes it leaves you with a brutal 80's riff or a nice speed solo, while other times it leaves you with a glam metal feel (example Squeeze It Dry, which could be a Poison song).

Best thing on this album is vocals. They're not the best vocals in metal, but definetly not a bad pair. At first it sounds like the vocals will be shitty. I must admit the song Rockin' With You is pretty lame; vocal wise lame as well. But the vocals get better. Take the song Air Attack for example. You can definetly tell the vocals are ready to kick some ass. I think they could be compared to Halford's early career in Judas Priest (ie. Stained Class or Sin After SIn), especially when he goes high and lets off the little squeal. Also the guitar riffs are starting to become more prominent on this song. Definetly showing a traditional style of riffing heavy metal, while sounding a lot like Judas Priest 80's era riffage.

The rest of these songs are pretty decent. Vocals start to suck on Tarot Dealer. No Haven For the Raven is just an all out slow song which could be thrown out of this album. But the rest is very decent, especially Stellar Mater (which in my opinion is the highlight of this album). The drum tempo, guitar riffs, and vocals blend awsomely on this song. Solo is also great, everything just comes togther on this song. The drum beat keeps this song alive, so that if you don't headbang to this song then you probably have a neck injury allowing you not to headbang.

One last awsome highlight from this album is Hellrider, which starts off with a motorcycle sound. The song then busts into an awsome speed metal riff and a kick ass guitar riff with nice guitar licks. The chorus reminds me of the song Invader by Judas Priest. Nonthing else to say about this album. If you like 80's heavy metal, then you will enjoy this album. It has awsome early Judas Priest sounding riffs and singing, with some great 80's style soloing.

Like a lot of 80s metal, Malice had their fair share of balls-out speed metal classics, combined with the more midpaced, rocker tunes, some cheesier than others. This album covers that entire spectrum, ranging from horribly silly to absolutely amazing. That makes it, in more ways than one, similar to Judas Priest "Defenders of the Faith".

The album takes a while to get going. "Rocking With You" and "Into the Ground" are kinda forgettable. "Air Attack", however, is immediately catchy, and has some great riffs in it. "Stellar Masters" is also pretty nice, and "Tarot Dealer" a bit sillier, but still acceptable.

"Squeeze it Dry" - sounds like a bizarre ripoff of Judas Priest's "You Don't Have to be Old to be Wise", but not nearly as good. Nuffsaid.

But what follows - oh my goodness! It's "Hellrider" - total blazing speed metal. It's worth getting the album for this song alone. (Though, I must mention, for the sake of full disclosure, that the 1983 demo version is about 100 times heavier.)

"No Haven for the Raven" and "The Unwanted" are midpaced power-metal songs - pretty good, in that they are not overly silly in that 80s way. Then the next song, while misspelled, is even better than "Hellrider". It's "Godz of Thunder", and it's one of the 10 best songs of all time - so between that and "Hellrider", this album is a must have.

Is it worth getting for two songs? YES! For those two songs, definitely. Especially considering that the rest of the album isn't necessarily bad, and in fact is very good most of the time. There are two really silly songs, and one of them happens to be the first song. Had they put "Hellrider" first, and left "Godz of Thunder" last, we would have "Reign in Blood" syndrome - two amazingly great songs, and the rest merely above average, with some real filler. The guitar work on this album is pretty competent - fairly standard dual leads, and the vocalist is a shrieker. If you liked "Defenders of the Faith".......