Unglued Reviews

Take Action! is a fund-raising compilation series from Hopeless Recordsā€™ charity-focused imprint Sub City, with 5% of the recommended retail price going to a good cause ā€“ in the case of this seventh volume, the non-profit organisation Do Something (DoSomething.org). The bands contributing previously released album tracks to this two-disc set run the wide gamut of alternative acts currently popular with the kids.

Disc one (an audio CD) features 19 songs ranging from power-pop (Cute Is What We Aim For) through pop-punk (All Time Low), rock (Mayday Parade), emo (Silverstein), and post-hardcore (Chiodos) to Christian metalcore (Haste The Day), plus a Public Service Announcement from Andy Williams of Southern metallers Every Time I Die. Disc two is a DVD containing music videos for 20 songs, only two of which are also to be found on the audio CD (including the amusing ā€™80s horror movie pastiche clip for Every Time I Dieā€™s Weā€™re Wolf). A similar range of styles is covered, including mainstream rock in the form of Plain White Tā€™s and The All-American Rejects, geek pop from Hellogoodbye, and pop-punk stalwarts MxPx, although the back half of the disc has a heavier slant than the CD, with bands like The Red Chord, High On Fire and Suicide Silence dominating.

Volume 7 might be seen as a step down from the mammoth three-disc set that Volume 6 offered, but itā€™s still a decent value-for-money sampler of some quality acts, and given the charity aspect itā€™s pretty hard to complain.

Owen Heitmann