He is best known as one of the founding members of extreme metal band Carcass, for which he also handled some of the vocals.

Jeff Walker has noted Owen's influence on the album Surgical Steel;[3] Owen appears on the album contributing some backing vocals, as well as in the music video for Unfit for Human Consumption.

In 2021, Carcass released their album Torn Arteries, which is named after a fictional band by Owen during his teenage years.

In February 1999, he suffered a brain haemorrhage at home and spent ten months in a hospital slowly emerging from a coma, making it impossible at the time for him to continue playing drums.

[5] More recently, he has started playing drums again, but mostly makes music using the computer software program Reason Studios.