Various Artists, Take Action!, Volume 6

I have to hand it to The Kids, sometimes. From the precious distance of Middle Age, I can remember back in the days of my youth, when music was ghettoized and genre-fied. You had metal, you had rock, you had hip-hop, you had pop, and you had all the bazillion sub-genres of each, and the rare intersections between were bright anomalies in the galaxy of Boxed-In Music. Sure, we made steps in the right direction (“we” meaning people and bands from my youth, not me personally) — Faith No More, Fishbone, Bad Brains, and when Anthrax and Public Enemy did “Bring Tha Noize,” for me, at least, it felt like the opening of a new era.

Jump forward TiVo-like to today, though, and all bets are off. The bands coming up these days don’t give a damn about labels or what you “can”/”can’t” do with certain genres of music. Hell, it occasionally feels like they don’t really care much about genres in general. Your average band of post-teens with guitars is just as likely to throw an electro break into a song as they are a hardcore breakdown; they mix and match styles as the occasion calls for it, not based on some supposed rulebook.

The end result is pretty much what amounts to the New Modern Rock. It’s loud, heavy on the guitars, and subgenre-defying, melding elements of metal, punk, hardcore, and pop with all the soul-baring hallmarks of emo. And dammit, I have to admire those crazy kids for coming up with it.

The reason I’m waxing ecstatic over the rock of today is because I’ve just worked my way through the Take Action! Volume 6 double-CD/DVD comp, the latest in the Take Action! series from Hopeless/Sub City Records. Close to half of the bands on here, from My Chemical Romance to Kaddisfly, fall vaguely in the New Modern Rock camp, albeit with sometimes wildly different takes on the same general blueprint. There are definitely some wide-ranging acts in the other half, like arty weirdos These Arms Are Snakes, sludgy, off-kilter stoners He Is Legend, gloomy Scandinavian metallers In Flames, and agitpunks Anti-Flag, but even those add to, rather than detract from, the mix.

Frankly, the biggest downside to this comp is that all but five of the tracks on here are taken from each band’s previously-released albums; if all you’re here for is new music from Cool Band A, you’re going to walk away disappointed. In a weird way, this comp isn’t for the diehard fanboy, but for somebody more like, well, me. Somebody who’s a casual observer — maybe a fan of some of these bands, maybe not — but who doesn’t own every album by every band on here. Taken as a whole, what Volume 6 is is a nicely varied cross-section of what The Kids have been up to lately.

And most of it’s good. On Disc One, the My Chemical Romance track, “This Is How I Disappear,” makes me actually want to like the band, which isn’t something I ever thought would happen. There’s also Emery’s “The Ponytail Parades (Acoustic),” which nicely pairs that you-just-ripped-my-heart-out anguished howl with boyish harmony vocals and piano, and Paramore’s “Emergency,” a ferocious, anthemic female-fronted emo-rock with gorgeous melodies and vocals that tread the line between ass-kicking and sweetness.

Drop Dead, Gorgeous get more chaotic and crazed than the rest on “Daniel, Where’s the Boat?,” while It Dies Today pummels you into submission with “Reignite the Fires.” Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Senses Fail, and Cute Is What We Aim For turn in decent performances, and In Flames’ “Come Clarity” burns with a fire that seems out-of-place coming from a country as chilly as Sweden. Hell, even the full-on metal-göd wail of Into Eternity’s “Timeless Winter” manages to make me smile.

For Disc Two, things take a bit more of a punkish turn, with excellent tracks from Anti-Flag (“This Is The End”), Strike Anywhere (“Instinct”), and lesser-knowns like The Briggs (“Don’t Care”). There’s still a heavy dose of more straight-ahead alternarock, too, with the likes of Heavens and So They Say filling in the ranks, but the level of quality manages to remain pretty high. Crash Romeo’s “Life Camp” brings in some nice, Anniversary-esque keys to complement the impassioned emo-boy vocals, while Damiera’s “Via Invested” aims for some old-school emo chords. Headed off in another direction entirely, The Hush Sound’s glam-cabaret “Wine Red” swings and swaggers coolly enough to make me wonder why I’ve never heard much by ’em before now, and Copeland’s “Control Freak” drives on serenely like Ben Gibbard’s best nighttime dreams.

Come to think of it, I have a hard time finding any low points to bitch about — which is surprising, considering that there’re 41 full tracks on these two CDs (and the fact that I’m a grumpy old codger with a low tolerance for sound-alike rock these days). But there it is: I finish the second disc of the set — I’m not even going to go into the DVD here, so you can experience that one all on your own — and I’m already thinking about which tracks I want to listen to again.

Of course, I can’t really talk about a Take Action! comp without mentioning the cause. The whole point of the exercise is to raise awareness of and fight against teen suicide, from the PSAs tacked onto all three discs (even the DVD) to the 5% of the proceeds donated to the Kristin Brooks Hope Center (http://www.hopeline.com/), the organization behind the 1-800-SUICIDE hotline.

Which, as someone who was once a cripplingly shy and depressed teen himself, is something well worth supporting; when you’re a kid, it’s far too easy to give up hope when you feel like there’s no one out there willing to listen. So whichever your passion is, the cause or the music, this comp’s well worth it.