Editing Under Lock and Key (section)

==Critical reception==
{{Album ratings
| rev1       = [[AllMusic]]
| rev1score  = {{Rating|4.5|5}}<ref name="album" />
| rev2       =''[[Martin Popoff|The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal]]''
| rev2score  = 6/10<ref name="Martin" >{{cite book |author-link=Martin Popoff |title=The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal: Volume 2: The Eighties |publisher=[[Collector's Guide Publishing]] |date=1 November 2005 |location=[[Burlington, Ontario]], Canada |isbn=978-1-894959-31-5}}</ref>
}}

The album received mostly positive reviews. Eduardo Rivadavia in his review for [[AllMusic]] calls ''Under Lock and Key'' "quite possibly Dokken's most 'complete' album, with a little something for every type of fan", like "fist-pumping headbangers",  extraordinary "bittersweet mid-paced rockers" ("Unchain the Night" and "The Hunter") and "saccharine ballads". Rivadavia recommends the album as the best introduction to new listeners of Dokken, but notes that heavy metal purists would likely prefer the band's 1984 album ''[[Tooth and Nail (Dokken album)|Tooth and Nail]]''.<ref name="album" /> 

Canadian journalist [[Martin Popoff]] considers the album "too weighted towards [[Def Leppard]]'s fat-and-open formula rock", resulting "a bit subdued and predictable" in comparison with its predecessor. The band's glamorous look, the media exposure and George Lynch's "attempt to define the L.A. sound in his own image" do not save ''Under Lock and Key'' from sounding "like the work of a band just fed".<ref name="Martin" />