Originating from Heilbronn in Southern Germany, SPITEFUEL debut is with this "Second To None" album. Founded in 2016 by ex- STRANGELET members Stefan Zörner, Tobias Eurich and Finn Janetzky, the guys are accompanied by Timo Pflüger and Björn-Philipp Hessenmüller. They play straight ahead Metal with melody in the same vein as JUDAS PRIEST or ACCEPT. With both of those being favorites of mine and being a big fan of German bands over the years, I was looking forward to this one. Straight away we are talking more modern ACCEPT sounding and an updated twin guitar style of PRIEST and MAIDEN. So maybe more AVENGED SEVENFOLD or SABATON is where it hits. Good quality production and song structures run through the tunes. This is good modern Metal for sure.

The album kicks off with an instrumental intro called "On Burning Wings". The first real track "Purified" soon breaks the intro with a riff and piercing scream reminiscent of "Painkiller" era JUDAS PRIEST. A song about purifying the sinners, this is very modern era ACCEPT in style. "By My Hand" has a nice galloping structure. They even mention "objection overruled" in the lyric to remind me of ACCEPT again. "Whorehouse Symphony" stomps along nicely but is a bit repetitive. "Regrets" follows in a power ballad style. This is my least favourite track as the band seem to be making an effort to fit this track in. I'd much rather play SKID ROW for a power ballad type song. "Sleeping with Wolves" is possibly the best track on the album. Starting with a wolf howling and nice eerie opening riff this is a strong song. Well-constructed, with a great jingly riff half way in and great solo. "Triad of Faith" is a nice atmospheric tune with a German Metal band style backing chorus of voices and layered guitar solos. "Fly" is an acoustic ballad and a bit like "Regrets", this sort of stuff is done much better by other bands. In this case, the SCORPIONS.

"Devils Darling" gets the album back on track with what the band is good at; driving Melodic Metal, catchy vocals and layered guitar work. "It Remains Empty Forever" finishes the album off well. This song contains some blast beat drumming. The song has a nice breakdown in the vocal sections and great guitars that a crowd can sing along to, similar to more recent IRON MAIDEN material. Overall, this a good solid modern Metal album. A couple of the tracks such as "By My Hand" and "Whorehouse Symphony" are a touch repetitive. The two ballad style tracks, "Regrets" and "Fly" are a bit short on quality. I enjoyed the rest and they seem like a fun band live. I predict that their next album will be more consistent.