TIM 'RIPPER' OWENS Says His Time With JUDAS PRIEST Has Been 'Erased' From Band's Past, Vows To Re-Record Both Albums

Tim "Ripper" Owens says that he will re-record the albums he made with JUDAS PRIEST because his time with the band has been "erased" from its past.

The Ohio-based singer created two studio albums with the British heavy metal legends — 1997's "Jugulator" and 2001's "Demolition" — before the band reunited with Rob Halford.

After a fan pointed out to Owens on Facebook earlier today that the two discs from his era of PRIEST have been out of print on vinyl for "quite a number of years now," Owens shared the post and responded: "Yep Great to see my time in JP has erased and my CDs and ME from their past!!!!! Well I haven't forgot my past and I will be working on re recording the studio CDs and releasing them myself!! Why not?"

A few hours later, another fan chimed in on Twitter that it is the record labels' fault that Tim's PRIEST catalog is out of print and not the band's, to which Owens replied: "Well you can't buy them or stream them and they aren't on iTunes. So he said I've been erased and I have. Blame whomever you want, but they have NEVER played one of my songs live after I left and you can't blame the label on that."

A short time later, a third fan weighed in on the topic, tweeting: "In fairness, Rob can't hit Tim's notes." But Owens disagreed, writing back: "He actually can. Rob is singing amazing."

In a 2016 interview with StrikeCanal, Owens defended himself against accusations by some JUDAS PRIEST fans of changing the band's sound to a more brutal, modern direction on "Jugulator". He explained: "Every record JUDAS PRIEST puts out is different. I mean, 'Nostradamus' sounds nothing like JUDAS PRIEST ever wrote, ever. 'Turbo' sounded nothing like JUDAS PRIEST. You know, JUDAS PRIEST changes. They wrote 'Painkiller', and 'Jugulator' was a transition; it was kind of following what was going on."

He continued: "You've gotta remember, JUDAS PRIEST always went with the times a little bit. Glenn [Tipton, guitar] started playing arpeggios. PANTERA was really big [at the time]. [On the] 'Painkiller' [tour], they toured with PANTERA; PANTERA opened for JUDAS PRIEST. 'Painkiller' was a heavy record, and this was a natural progression. The difference is I probably had a few more different layers to my voice that they could tap into — some deeper, death metal kind of undertones to do backups and some different types of voices that they might be able to try. But it was JUDAS PRIEST."

Last year, Owens told Metal Temple that he would rejoin JUDAS PRIEST if asked. "There's no doubt I would, if the timing was right," he said. "It's not gonna happen — it's never gonna happen. It'll never, ever happen; Rob's not ever gonna leave JUDAS PRIEST. They'll retire and I think that'll be it. But, yeah, I'll tell you the reason I would is because of the friendship. Financially, I don't know if it could be any… it's not gonna be any better than what I do now. But the friendship with those guys is really great. They are great guys and I had an absolute blast with them. That's probably the thing I miss the most — hanging out with them and the friendship."