The Hamiltons come out swinging with new album Credit: Photo by Jim Leatherman
Garage punk, pop punk, chain punk, egg punk, crust punk, hardcore… uggghhh, the taxonomy can get exhausting to the point of meaninglessness. Jesus, don’t even get me started on the tribal politics. Can we please just get some pure punk rock without the factionalism? Turns out we can, and Orlando band The Hamiltons are it.

The Hamiltons — the foursome of Robert English (lead vocals, guitar), John Koroshetz (bass, vocals), Josh Gibson (lead guitar) and Waylon Thornton (drums) — don’t conveniently fit into any of the punk cliques. And to their credit, they don’t seem to aspire toward it either. No leather jackets, liberty spikes or anything obvious like that here. Instead, they ditch the frills and just shoot straight for the essence of
punk.

Although The Hamiltons have been around since 1998, much has precluded them from momentum. There’ve been extended recesses due to heavy things like substance abuse, incarceration and the tragic death of founding member Ralph Ameduri. Despite that, The Hamiltons have in recent years finally become a consistent scene force in terms of shows and output. Now, after some smaller releases, they’ve at last dropped their first full album.

That lack of haste has allowed The Hamiltons to make this full-length debut with the execution and craft of veterans. Their brand-new album FLA — produced by acclaimed locals Chris Jay and Jarrett Pritchard — is a fully cooked, powerfully rendered work from a band that knows who they are and what they do well. From the songwriting to the playing to the production, everyone involved understands both the mission and the terrain.

The Hamiltons are about force, not fashion. As such, FLA keeps true and tight to the band’s fiber, going all in on their lean muscle with zero indulgence in superfluous embellishment. It’s 12 tracks of rugged American rock that merges the blunt-force brutalism of hardcore, the crude animalism of noise rock and just some straight-up rock guts. The sum total is a pure, undiluted full-length document of The Hamiltons.

For a band that’s been around for decades despite mountainous odds, it’s deliverance. FLA now streams everywhere and tops TLU’s Spotify playlist.


Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2025.

Music columnist.