There’s something about truth—the word, the idea, the slippery slope of it—that Harry Kappen can’t shake. On “Break These Chains,” the Dutch musician-therapist-renaissance man dials up the volume, the guitars, and the urgency to deliver a rallying cry against misinformation, moral decay, and the weaponization of words. It’s not just a song—it’s a siren.
Kappen, who’s as likely to reference Plato as he is Prince, kicks off the second single from his upcoming album Four with a blast of lyrical firepower: “We do have freedom of speech / But we don’t need a misleading preach.” Right there, he draws the battle lines—not between left and right, but between honesty and spin, light and shadow. Think Dylan in protest mode meets a post-pandemic Peter Gabriel, if he swapped worldbeat for wall-of-sound rock.
The track throbs with tension. A chugging riff underscores the verses like a heartbeat straining under pressure, while Kappen’s voice—half plea, half reprimand—threads through the chaos. “Where are the angels?” he asks, not rhetorically, but like a man who’s waited too long for them to show up. You can almost hear the weight of his day job as a music therapist here; this is a guy who’s seen what broken systems do to young souls.
There’s a moment after the solo—more blues than blister—when the refrain kicks in again: Break these chains / Save us from more pain. It’s simple. It’s chant-worthy. And it lands not like a conclusion, but a resolution. A new declaration of independence—not from tyranny, but from apathy.
Musically, Kappen’s touchstones are clear. Shades of McCartney in the melodic turns. The social consciousness of Radiohead without the nihilism. The polish of Bowie, but rooted in bar-band grit. He’s not trying to reinvent the wheel here. He’s turning it with purpose.
With Four, Kappen promises a genre-spanning statement, but “Break These Chains” is the anchor—the moment the personal meets the political and refuses to let go. It’s the sound of a man staring into the mess of modernity and deciding that silence is no longer an option.
And maybe—just maybe—it’s the anthem we didn’t know we needed in 2025.
–Benjamin Torres
