San Pedro,CA · punk rock · pop-punk

Toys That Kill

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Todd Congelliere's San Pedro melodic-punk institution (Recess Records) — off-kilter hooks and DIY-lifer charm, the scene's connective tissue.

Toys That Kill grew out of F.Y.P., the band Todd Congelliere started in San Pedro, California, in 1989 with little more than a cheap drum machine and a four-track recorder. Skater friends who used his ramp had introduced him to punk through mixtapes of Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, 7 Seconds and the Descendents, and F.Y.P. built on that groundwork with fast, hardcore-rooted songs that mixed Minutemen-style word-cram with Descendents-style melody and a streak of dark humor.

By 2000 the band had outgrown that name. F.Y.P. played its last show in the Inland Empire, and the following night the same musicians debuted as Toys That Kill at a club near the Port of Los Angeles, with Congelliere and fellow singer-guitarist Sean Cole joined by bassist Chachi Ferrara and drummer Denis Fleps. Congelliere kept running the Recess Records label out of the same harbor town.

The band's songs tend to be short and fast but rarely straightforward, favoring odd chord turns, overlapping vocal parts and shouted group choruses over conventional pop-punk polish. Congelliere has described the rhythm section's low, heavy pulse as the "TTK thump," a weight that grounds songs otherwise built on big, Clash-sized choruses.

The group has toured the United States once or twice a year since 2000, with additional runs through Europe twice and a single trip to Japan, a steady pace that has kept it tied into the Southern California DIY circuit that produced it. Congelliere, Ferrara and Fleps also play together in Underground Railroad to Candyland, another band on the Recess Records roster, a link that shows how interconnected the label's stable of bands remains.

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