Interview by Kris Peters
When it comes to drummers they don't come more top shelf than Carmine Appice.
After leaving Ozzy Osbourne in the early 1980s, Appice decided he was done with working for other musicians and decided instead to forge his own path, with his own band.
That band became King Kobra who burst onto the music scene in 1985 with their debut album Ready To Strike.
With a sound that nestled somewhere between heavy metal and glam metal, King Kobra have undergone several line-up changes over the years, as well as taking more than one gestation periods off, but one thing has remained constant throughout.
Carmine Appice.
Now, with a renewed line-up featuring Quiet Riot guitarist Carlos Cavazo and former Dio member Rowan Robertson, King Kobra are back with their seventh and arguably best album to date titled We Are Warriors. It is a typically hard hitting album from the band and one which Appice promises will be the start of another fresh era of metal from one of the greats.
HEAVY sat down with Appice to find out more.
"I've always tried to stay within the limits of whatever band's I'm working with," he began. "We Are Warriors started out with me and Paul (Shortino, vocals) and sometimes Rowan and sometimes Carlos putting some ideas down because we all have studios. The whole album was done by everyone in their home studio, because the kind of budgets you get today and everybody lives in different places... it doesn't pay to fly everybody in and get hotels and sit around and write songs and then go into a studio. You might as well throw your money out the window that you're getting. Me and Paul probably made 5c an hour making that album because we spent a lot of time on it. A lot of time writing the songs. But we did it all by the internet. As you can see I have my studio behind me and I engineer my own drums. We did everything that way."
In the full interview Carmine goes deeper into the writing and recording process, what he was going for musically with We Are Warriors, what the new members bring to the sound, how much King Kobra's sound has changed from their debut album to this one, working with Ozzy Osbourne and being sacked by Sharon, changing with the times and more.