Breakin' The Chains

Looking back at when I first started to get into music, I'm amazed at how quickly things progressed. Dokken's Tooth And Nail was one of my favorite albums when I started to discover Heavy Metal in 1984, and yet when I finally went back and picked up the Breaking The Chains cassette, it barely saw any playing time, and by the time Under Lock And Key was released in 1985, I had pretty much left the band in my rearview mirror.

I've been obsessed with records from this time period lately, and it made me go out and grab a download for Dokken's first album to see if it was the clunker that I remembered it as.

After ignoring it for the past 30 plus years, I suddenly found myself obsessed with this album. I couldn't get enough, and had these songs on repeat. I couldn't understand why I struggled with it as a kid, because some of these songs straight up rip...and while I could possibly end up on an FBI watch list for singing songs like Young Girls and Felony, I'm going to have to take that chance because I'm having a blast with this record.

The more I started checking into the history of the record, the more I wanted a copy...and suddenly, an original pressing of this thing was at the top of my immediate want list.

Initially it was released only in Europe back in 1981 as Breakin' The Chains under the name "Don Dokken", before finally seeing a more widespread release for the US in 1983. The '83 release gets a slight change to the record title and cover, features a different mix, with some songs being partially re-recorded, and a different track sequence...so of course, I needed to own them both.

The US pressing was considerably easier to pick up, and at a fraction of the price the original German pressing goes for.

I haven't done a close side by side test on the audio, but I'm leaning toward the more raw sound of the original pressing. Still, I'm extremely happy to have both in my collection.