The official music video for Tim “Ripper” Owens’ song “Embattled” was released in July of this year. The track was made by Jamey Jasta and Nick Bellmore. Nick Bellmore, Charlie Bellmore, and Chris Beaudette are all members of the band.
Owens spoke about the response to “Embattled” in a new interview with Australia’s Heavy. People are going to like it. They might not like it as much if they’re into the mellow part of my career. The song begins with a fast one. We’ll probably go into battle. There are a few more fast songs. The second mellow song on the record is ‘Embattled’. It’s really nice.
I talked about this with Jamey Jasta and he wanted to capture what I did in my early career and what I did with Judas Priest’s album. When he first talked to me, he was like, “We have to do something to take advantage of what you did on ‘Jugulator’, because it was brutal and it was great.” That was his biggest concern.
Owens said that he can sing a lot of different styles of music and that this is one of his favorite ways to sing. I like the straightforward, brutal metal that is melodic. It widens it even more if you take it down and sing mellow.
Tim thinks people are going to love it. A new song, a video, and a lyric video will be released. We’re going to try to get the EP out as quickly as possible. We were supposed to shoot for the end of October, but I don’t know if we’ll make that. We’re just trying to get it out after everything is finalized.
Owens said that Dee’s last couple of records were heavier for Dee and that they were some of the best he’d heard from Dee. It was a pleasure to work together. That’s what I was persuaded to believe. I’m willing to do that. I think he was sending me things that were more aggressive and heavier than I was used to and that was what he wanted me to do.
He said that he is a fan of heavy guitar riffs and heavy music. I can do that even though I’m not the cookie-cutter guy. Jamey probably sang some backups to give Dee a heavy part that was in the background. Jamey probably didn’t have to do it because he could do it himself. We would go back and forth with Jamey’s vocal ideas, and they were great. I can’t remember the name of the song he sent me, and I can’t remember what he was doing at the beginning of the song. I’m not able to do it. This is similar to him. He had something that made sense to him. I think Jamey likes doing things like this because it brings out other parts of the music that he used to listen to. I grew up listening to heavy metal bands like TESTAMENT, ANTHRAX, and METALLICA, as well as IRON MAIDEN and Judas Priest. It was likely the same with him. Jamey grew up listening to hardcore, but he also listened to other music.
“Ripper has been one of my favorite voices in metal since Judas Priest’s ‘Jugulator’ came out 25 years ago,” Jasta said when the collaboration was first announced. I can’t wait to hear the crushing new metal tracks we are creating because of his power, range, and work ethic.
Owens’s first solo album, “Play My Game”, was the 66th best-selling new artist album of the year. The CD was released by a third party. Around a dozen brand-new tracks that Owens composed himself or together with renowned friends, such as Bob Kulick, Chris Caffery and Mike Callahan were included in the offering.
Owens is one of the most important metal singers of all time. When he succeeded Rob Halford, joining Judas Priest in May 1996, the press was surprised as well as impressed, as Owens had previously been a fairly unknown quantity to international music journalists and only a few new of him from the band WINTERS BANE. Following successful tours with the British metal legends, the strong studio recording “Demolition” (2001) and the live recordings “Meltdown – 98 Live” 1998 and “Live In London” 2003 were released. Jon Schaffer enlisted him to team up with ICED EARTH in the spring of 2004. The ICED EARTH album was released three years later. The debut by BEYOND FEAR was highly praised. In the spring of 2008 Owens joined one of the world’s best guitar players, Yngwie Malmsteen, on a song called “Perpetual Flame”.
Owens is a member of the former Judas Priest band.
