Veteran Rockers Tomahawk and The Melvins Still Out With Something To Prove

Tomahawk 25th Anniversary Tour With Special Guests The Melvins

The Union Event Center

Saturday, August 8th, 2026

Alt-metal supergroup Tomahawk recently reformed for a 25th anniversary tour, bringing along longtime friends and uber-sludge mavens The Melvins as co-headliners, making a stop at Salt Lake’s Union Event Center in a dual effort to bludgeon eardrums into blissful submission. Throughout the raucous and deafening performances of both acts, what perhaps stood out most was the pedigree of all the players involved, not to mention the legacy of underground rock going back nearly fifty years.

Tomahawk frontman Mike Patton has always been one of the hardest-working figureheads in extreme music, his truncated resume including time fronting funk-metal pioneers Faith No More, bizarro carnival-barkers Mr. Bungle, his contributions with jazz provocateur John Zorn, and running the hardcore independent record label Ipecac. In comparison, Tomahawk is one of his projects more steeped in hard-rock convention, albeit still largely off-kilter. Much of this innovation comes from guitarist Duane Denison, best known for his scalpel-wielding fretwork with noise-rockers The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid. Hammering down the rhythm section with militant precision is drummer John Stainer, late of post-hardcore heroes Helmet and revered experimental prog-punk unit Battles. Anchoring it all at the low end is bassist Trevor Dunn, who has served time with Patton in Mr. Bungle and Fantomas (a group that also features Melvins’ Buzz Osbourne).

Onstage, Patton manned his station behind a lab of synthesizers and samplers, along with other odd noise-makers like a mad scientist. A vocalist with a reported six-octave range, he repeatedly snarled, growled, and whispered before launching into soaring choruses and segues you could feel in your sternum, often within the span of a single song. Much more subdued in his posturing was Denison, looking like an absolute gent next to Patton’s maniacal antics. His regal stature didn’t align with the racket he was conjuring from his instrument, his slithering, reptilian riffs often combusting into crushing bursts of blues-metal stomp and jazz-punk dissonance. Stainer and Dunn made the impossible task of nailing the chaos down to the floor look easy, making songs such as the sinister “God Hates a Coward” and the demented anthem “Rape This Day” into a volatile subversion of larger-than-life arena rock.

Co-headliners The Melvins have been peddling their caustic mix of metal, noise and punk since 1983. Originally from Aberdeen, Washington, they famously mentored a young Kurt Cobain while crafting the sound that would later be classified as grunge. The Melvins never fit that marketing term, instead taking elements of Black Sabbath, The Swans, and Black Flag, and slowing things down to a painfully glacial pace. Over the decades, they have turned their ultra-heavy and eccentric take on sludge metal into their own genre. Working with a litany of bass players over the years, guitarist/vocalist Buzz Osbourne and drummer Dale Crover have settled on Steven McDonald from legendary candy-punkers Redd Kross since 2015. On that night, the band added second drummer Coady Willis, who usually mans the kit for frequent Melvins’ tourmates, the pile-driving noise duo Big Business.

In a punishing set that would be hard for any band to follow, the band plowed through old and new material like a weapon of mass destruction. Osbourne careened through monothelic, distorted freakouts and shards of barely controlled feedback, dressed like an ancient pagan wizard complete with ceremonial robe and his signature graying afro on full display. The dual drummers kept exact time with one another, ferally ripping into their kits with a sound that felt like a Teutonic shift in the Earth’s crust. McDonald was far more minstrel in his presence, dressed like a long-lost Flying Burrito Brother whipping his long locks and strutting around in a rock-star homage/mockery. Tracks like the plodding menace of “A History Of Bad Men,” the punk-metal thrash of “Honey Bucket”, and the bruising closer “Night Goat” cemented the band’s reputation as the finest purveyors of their particular brand of outsider stoner-rock.

Despite all the graying hair onstage and in the crowd, not one aspect of both bands' performances seemed like a geriatric exercise in nostalgia or a self-congratulatory victory lap. Instead, they came off as creatively challenging, full of frenetic energy, and still out with something to prove. That’s quite an accomplishment when you consider Steven McDonald played his first Redd Kross gig in his teens, opening for Black Flag in the late 70’s. Or that Osbourne and Crover are about to celebrate 45 years together. But the only thing that felt old about Tomahawk and The Melvins that night was that you were witnessing the work of old pros, with lineage back through some of the most exciting and influential flashpoints in rock history. That night at The Union Center, they all very loudly proved it.