King Kobra

Listen for free or download any King Kobra track for just 12 cents per song!

King Kobra Hair Metal Band

Although King Kobra had a hard time spelling the word "cobra," they didn't have a hard time making decent metal albums.  King Kobra was the 1984 brainchild of Carmin Appice.  Carmin  had been the drummer for Ozzy Osbourne before his King Kobra days.  Carmin put together a group of relatively unknown rockers, and the band released Ready to Strike in 1985.  In support of their early efforts, King Kobra toured with bands like Iron Maiden and Kiss. 

Their second release, called Thrill of a Lifetime, was released in 1986.  Although not as popular as Ready to Strike, it is also considered one of the band's better productions.  For those who remember, King Kobra was even hired to write some music for the 80's hit movie Iron Eagle. Over the years, there were many band line up changes for the band (even Marq Torien of the Bullet Boys took up vocals for a short time for King Kobra).  By the late 80's, King Kobra had split up, and Appice joined up with John Sykes on his Blue Murder project.

In 1999, they released an album called The Lost Years, which is a collection of previous unreleased 80's songs by the band.  The band had a reunion release as in 2001 and 2011 respectively.  At the time of this writing, the King Kobra Discography was as follows:

Listen for free or download any King Kobra track for just 12 cents per song!

  • 1985: Ready to Strike
  • 1986: Thrill of a Lifetime
  • 1988: King Kobra III
  • 1983: Nemesis
  • 1999: The Lost Years
  • 2001: Hollywood Trash
  • 2011: King Kobra