There’s a particular kind of anticipation that runs through a room when a band that once felt gone for good walks back onstage, and that feeling was impossible to miss at The Union on Saturday night. Tomahawk — the art-damaged supergroup pairing Mike Patton with Duane Denison, John Stanier and Trevor Dunn — brought their long-awaited reunion tour to Salt Lake City, and it was clear just how much this show had been anticipated.
Openers Melvins set the tone early, grinding out a set of sludgy, riff-heavy noise. Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover’s decades of chemistry showed in every off-kilter tempo change, and by the time they closed out their set, the room was primed for whatever came next.
What came next was Tomahawk operating like a band that had never taken a decade-plus apart. Denison’s guitar work was as angular and precise as ever, threading needle-sharp riffs through Stanier’s thunderous, almost mechanical drumming. Trevor Dunn held the low end down with the kind of unshowy competence that lets everyone else take risks. And Patton — restless, theatrical, unpredictable — moved across the stage like a man who genuinely missed doing this, snarling through cuts from the self-titled debut and Mit Gas before mining deeper into Anonymous and Oddfellows territory.
The setlist leaned into the band’s catalog rather than teasing new material, which felt appropriate for a night that was as much a celebration of the group’s history as it was a proper concert. Older songs landed with a weight that suggested the years apart had only sharpened the band’s sense of what makes their music work — the tension between Denison’s angular post-hardcore instincts and Patton’s genre-hopping vocal chaos has never sounded more deliberate.
The Union itself proved a solid home for the show. Mid-sized and no-frills, the venue let the sound stay tight without sacrificing the room’s energy, and the general-admission floor meant the crowd could push forward for the loud stuff and breathe a little during the moodier detours.
By the encore, it was obvious this wasn’t just another stop on a reunion cash-grab tour. Tomahawk played like a band rediscovering why they started this project in the first place — restless, sharp-edged, and clearly glad to be back in a room full of people who never stopped waiting for them.
Bottom line: A tight, ferocious set from a band whose reunion lives up to the hype.
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