Warthur Jugulator kicked off a new era for Judas Priest with a new lead vocalist, with Ripper Owens attempting to fill the boots of the almighty Rob Halford. That's one of the toughest roles to fill in metal, and in retrospect it was inevitable that a certain chunk of the fanbase would never accept Ripper as lead vocalist of the band, no matter how good he was.

And let's be clear - Ripper's not bad! He makes sure to slip in a scream or two early on in the opening title track to reassure us that he can indeed pull off something comparable to Halford's range, and I'd actually say his vocals might be the closest part of this album to "classic Priest". You see, as well as taking on a new vocalist, Priest took this opportunity to take on a new sound - a sort of doom-y groove metal approach with a healthy dose of Metallica influence, much more reminiscent of then-modern sounds in metal than of the classic Priest sound (or of the high-intensity variant of it which they'd premiered on Painkiller).

Now, I've nothing against bands experimenting with their sound (though some experiments would be better off left on the cutting room floor, rather than making it onto a record) - but this does mean that the vocals and instruments on this album are working at cross-purposes. Ripper's trying to sell us on the idea that he can deliver old-school Judas Priest vocals like Halford could, whilst the musical backing is saying "this ain't the old Judas Priest any more, we've got a whole new deal going on".

It's no surprise that Jugulator gets a bad rap, then. Fans might have accepted Judas Priest trying out a bold new sound if Halford were still fronting the band, and they might have accepted Ripper as the new vocalist if his first album with the group had more continuity with the previous sound of the group than this one does, but changing the singer and changing the musical style at the same time was most likely a bridge too far.

Is it a good Judas Priest album? Probably not, because beyond the odd yell from Ripper it's got almost none of the stuff you go to a Judas Priest album hoping to hear beyond being broadly in the metal genre. Is it an entertaining 1990s metal album? I'd say so - but not to the extent that it made any great contribution to the genre. And when you're a band of the stature and age of Judas Priest, any album which doesn't either push the genre you co-created forward or at the very least evoke the spirit of your classic material is going to be a tough sell. Jugulator is OK, but it's not much better than OK.

666sharon666 1997's Jugulator was Judas Priest's comeback album of sorts as it was their first release since 1990's Painkiller. This album marked the first release to feature Tim 'Ripper' Owens on vocals following Rob Halford's exit from the band in 1992. Rob Halford is a vocalist of the sort of calibre that makes him difficult to replace and the fact that Judas Priest is one of the biggest and longest running names in metal didn't really help the band when they needed to do just that. For metal fans, being the fickle bunch that we are, whoever the band brought in was never going to cut it for most of Judas Priest's followers. Personally though I think they made a great choice in Tim Owens. His career has been rather marred by the fact he replaced an iconic frontman in not one but two metal bands (the other being US power metallers Iced Earth), only to later be replaced himself by the very guy he replaced. But he's a great vocalist in his own right and I personally think he held his own while in Judas Priest. He's definitely not the reason why Jugulator isn't the most worthwhile Judas Priest record.

Actually, this isn't a bad album. It's even a good album. I think that Judas Priest have made weaker records even with Rob up front but it certainly is one of their oddity records, in that it features a much more modern groove metal sound as its primary element. While oddities have actually been a feature of their discography, the others aren't really too much of a far cry from their usual traditional metal sound. Rocka Rolla was a finding their sound album. Point of Entry and Turbo really just play up the hard rock influences that have been present on nearly every Judas Priest album ever released. Even Painkiller could be described as simply turning things up to eleven. But Jugulator is more difficult to think of as the work of Judas Priest. Some of the riffs here sound like they'd be more at home on a Pantera album. As I said, I think Jugulator is a good album; definitely not their weakest effort, so long as one is prepared to judge it on its own merits. The songs aren't classics but they are all enjoyable. I can't help thinking that the album may have been better received though if it didn't have the Judas Priest moniker on it.

rushfan4 Seven years passed since Painkiller and Judas Priest finally return with a new singer Tim "Ripper" Owens, who was a singer in a Judas Priest tribute band. A movie was made based on his story of going from a tribute band to being the lead singer of the band that he was singing tribute to. I hate to be one of "those" people, but Judas Priest should have remained on hiatus. Admittedly, I haven't listened to this album enough to give it a fair shake, but it is too thrashy for my tastes. On occasion, with the screams Ripper Owens sounds a lot like Rob Halford, but on the rest of the album he just sounds like a run of the mill thrash metal singer. Ironically, Rob Halford left the band to pursue a different type of metal, and he became more thrashy too, and quite frankly I don't care all that much for his solo career either. Obviously, K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton felt that they had more to say as Judas Priest, and musically it isn't all that bad, but it just isn't Judas Priest without Rob Halford. This one is hard for me to rate within the MMA guidelines because it is hard to give it 2 stars for fans only, because I am a fan and I don't really like it. But on the other hand it isn't a horrible album that would deserve only 1 star, even though I don't really like it. So with this being said, I have decided on 2 and 1/2 stars as a compromise. I have a feeling that it will appeal to many modern metal fans, who tend to like the harsher vocals.

Time Signature Blood stained...

Genre: thrash metal / heavy metal

As with "Turbo", "Jugulator" proved to be too big a change of direction for many old time fans to cope with. While "Turbo" took a more poppy direction, "Jugulator" is essentially a thrash metal album.

An I think that, this album is actually a great album, where Priest showed that they certainly were fully capable of playing the thrash style that was fashionable in the late 1990s - and much better than most of the thrash metal bands at the time. Blending the aggression of thrash metal of metal with a downtuning-derived darkness and elements of traditional heavy metal, Priest made a great and totally underrated album out of 'Jugulator' - releasing "Cathedral Spires", one of their best epic tracks ever.

... and 'Ripper' Owens, who is a great and versatile vocalist, did a superb job on this album.

Recommended to any fan of heavy metal and thrash metal.