Rockpages.gr recently conducted an interview with ICED EARTH lead singer Tim Owens (BEYOND FEAR, ex-JUDAS PRIEST). Here is an excerpt from the interview where he speaks about his position in Iced Earth:

Q: Being in Iced Earth for two albums now, what would you say that you offer to Iced Earth, that they didn’t have before?

A: "I don’t know… I know that my singing style is something that John (Schaffer) always hears it in his head. He said it years and years ago, when I met him. I think that it’s a help for the song writer, for John, that he has a piece, that he might have always thought, but on the other hand, Matt (Barlow) was a great singer, and he is a great singer…"

Q: I am asking this before your vocal styles are totally different, and I guess you can take Iced Earth’s music to a different place, do something different. I am not saying if that’s better or worse…

A: "Yeah, yeah… I sing different, and the difference is that I can sing a lot of the style that Matt would have. John doesn’t go there… if people listened to the Priest albums they’d know that I have a “lowness” to my voice. John gets into it every now and then, but he doesn’t always tap in to it. John is enjoying it, because he gets to do a lot of things that he always heard in his mind."

Q: How did you feel when you had to sing 'The Trilogy', which was recorded for this album?

A: "Well, it was fun because I started to sing it the real way. From touring last year I was really used to sing it how it’s done, so it was a challenge to sing it, kind of the same, but in a different tuning. It was actually a little easier, I think, the other way… the old way. Because, what happens is that we lowered the tuning of the song, which makes some of the parts to go higher. You’d think that they’d go lower, but then they went too low, like in the beginning… “I can see clearly now”… if you lower the song, you certainly can’t sing lower… (lowering his voice to ground level!) “I can see clearly now”… so it came (going higher than the roof) “I can see clearly now”… and we weren’t even sure. John haven’t come over, Jim was in the studio… we demoed it. We wanted to make sure if he could sing it, it wasn’t even sure if I was going to be in it… it’s awesome! I love how it starts now. It’s pretty cool. But it was fun to do the rehearsals and then go “Ohoh! Now I have to do the old version!” and the reason why we’ll do the new version live, but we didn’t have anything synched up… I enjoy singing it the other way as well…"

For the full interview go to this location.