KING KOBRA released their self-titled comeback album on April 15th in Europe, it will hit North American store shelves on May 5th. Drummer Carmine Appice recently spoke with SleazeRoxx.com about his band's newest musical endeavour, an exceprt follows:

Since Hollywood Trash was heavier you made mention that Marcie Free wouldn't be interested. However, since the new album was going back to the vintage sound did you think about approaching her about it?

Carmine Appice: "No... I'll tell you why. I had a Mexican DVD from a show we had done in the '80s - I wanted to simply put it out on the market for whatever fans would be interested in the video, this was the only piece of video of King Kobra live. I wanted to put this out on a label who I've worked with, Fuel 2000, and it wasn't about the money. There wasn't a lot of money in it, let's just put it out there so the fans of King Kobra can buy it if they want it. I called her up about it and she said no. She took it a step further and said that if I released it that she'd sue me! I was like, come on give me a break! There's not even any money in this, it's about getting the footage out there for the fans.

That left a bad taste in my mouth and coupled with the fact that Mark Free left the band because he wanted to play wimpier music... and this album is more along the lines of Ready To Strike. There was just no way that he'd want to do it, and besides, it would just be better without him. We wound up getting a new singer and Paul Shortino came to mind because he happened to be involved with mixing a KEEL record. We were having a conversation with producer Pat Regan and Paul Shortino came up in the conversation. I had worked with Paul before - we had a great time together so I gave him a call. He said he'd do it so then we called Dave Henzerling (David Michael-Philips) and he said he'd do it and we went from there. I'll tell you what, not only did he do a fantastic job singing but he did an outstanding job engineering the record and the production of the album. Dave is also a great producer, engineer and great with pro-tools. Between the three of us we put the record together and turned it into the label."

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.