### King Kobra: Ready to strike

#### 02/12/11 || Habakuk

I must admit that the first time I heard this band was on some Audio Autopsy this year, and they sucked ass. I didn’t even have an idea who they were or what they had done before. Well, as it turns out, these guys have been around for quite some time, and actually wrote the soundtrack for IRON EAGLE!!! And it sucked ass. Before that, though, they put out one album which is absolute tits, and it’s this one. Ready to strike. Motherfuggers. And why is that? Simple. This is a glam rock / hair metal / whatever you wanna call it record, and the main problem with those is – that’s right: inconsistency. Sure, “Lay it down” is an ace song, “Too young to fall in love” is too, “Youth gone wild”, I won’t argue that, but a lot of stuff on the respective albums is nothing more than filler. Rarely does one find an album in the genre that can be (almost) listened through without hitting the skip button.

Now don’t ruin your ripped shirt with all that saliva, this isn’t perfect either, but considering we’re talking about an absolute second tier band whose best story is the singer getting a sex change at some point, we have quite the underrated gem at hand. Just like most other half decent hair metal albums, this has a few killer songs: “Ready to strike” and “Breakin’ out” with their build-ups and awesome shout-along choruses make me wanna jump in my car and blast them on 120 db while racing down A9. That’s an Autobahn, for all you outsiders. Now the real curious part is that the rest of the songs, while changing the pace a little, don’t really suck it either. Stompers “Hungry” and “Shadow rider” serve as a nice break-up right after the first song is through, and Mark Free (or should I say Marcie?) makes sure that later during the course of the album, even the cheesefests like “Dancing with desire” or “Tough guys” (Jesus…) end up pretty damn good. Speaking of which, the absolute best and worst moment is when the dude(tte) goes … “tough guys don’t cry… hear me cryyyyyy” – SOLO!!!

Fuck man, you gotta love this. I guess half of you don’t, but I AM CONFIDENT OF MY SEXUALITY. Now. Before this album, I was actually called Habaslida. It’s that manly. Seriously now, there is exactly one bad song on this, and that’s only because I can’t stand that fucken gang-singing chorus (Who came up with that shit?) that permeates “Attention”, which sits comfortably in the middle of the album. Strange, as the other choruses, apart from the pretty mean, snarly guitar tone, are what really elevates this album above a lot of contestants. Carmine Appice’s drumming is also notable for being super solid and not too eighties in production, but in the end it’s nothing to cream your pants over. Although he was the drummer for Rod Stewart. That’s right, Rod fucken Stewart and the Blastmatics.

What else is there to say? As you might have guessed by now, the songwriting is varied and engaging and the lyrics are classic 80s love-rants written to make you feel like an idiot because you find yourself singing along with the singer’s awesome voice, even if it’s about “too much home work and yard work”. Also, there is almost no stupid synthie bullshit to detract from the great riffing. So as a final verdict, “Ready to strike”, despite not being most people’s obvious recommendation in this genre, is something you shouldn’t miss if anything ralked about in this review has appealed to you. Including the stuff about sex change. Breakin’ out!

- Information
- Released: 1986
- Label: Capitol
- Website: King Kobra MySpace
- Band
- Mark Free: vocals
- Mick Sweda: guitars
- David Michael-Phillips: guitars
- Johnny Rod: bass
- Carmine Appice: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Ready to strike
- 02. Hunger
- 03. Shadow rider
- 04. Shake up
- 05. Attention
- 06. Breakin’ out
- 07. Tough guys
- 08. Dancing with desire
- 09. Second thoughts
- 10. Piece of the rock