THE BEAST

Former Judas Priest vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens talked to Metal Command about his years with the Priest and the two albums he recorded with them; 1997’s “Jugulator” and 2001’s “Demolition.”
He said:
 “‘Demolition’, in time, ended up becoming my favorite one I did with them, because there’s some of my favorite songs on it, as a whole. But ‘Jugulator’ is an amazing record. And what I like about it…
 “It was hard to record because they were like kids in a candy store. Glenn [Tipton, guitar] would just say, ‘Can you do this?’ ‘Can you sound like this?’ ‘Can you sing like this?’
 “It’s got all the way from death metal undertones that I’m singing underneath – death metal to the high notes. It’s funny because people don’t realize this – it probably has one of the biggest ranges of vocals on it that I’ve done on a record, because of that…
 “Iced Earth had a wide range as well, but the only one that has never been put as much on a record until maybe Beyond Fear was the hard, Pantera, death metal kind of voice.
 “Glenn loved it, man. He would just always push me and push me and push me: ‘Do this.’ ‘Cause he knew I could do it. I had a different type of range that I had [and] different voices that I could sing.”
Ripper added:
 “It was a great time and great records. One of my favorite songs of all time was ‘Blood Stained.’ And then to come back and do songs like ‘Hell Is Home’ and ‘One on One.’
 “‘One on One’, there’s those death metal undertones in. The studio version is fantastic when I go back and listen to it, ’cause it has that… I always said it needed to be a song that a wrestler or a boxer would be coming into a ring with.”
Owens also defended the records against criticism over the weak commercial performance, saying:
 “It was a different singer, different time. First of all, heavy metal was almost nonexistent at that time. No bands – AC/DC; I don’t care who you were – you weren’t playing arenas, first of all. It was bad. It was a really bad part of metal, that time. But those records, to me, are amazing.” Via MetalAddicts