AFTERSHOCK: Tool, Danny Elfman and Queens of the Stone Age cap final day

Tool band, Maynard James Keenan Tool performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

After three days of punishing heat, Aftershock’s final day brought cloud cover, slightly cooler temperatures and a lineup built around guitar gods, ’90s favorites and artists who don’t fit neatly into boxes.

Tool closed the weekend with progressive metal precision, Danny Elfman made an orchestra feel at home at Aftershock and Queens of the Stone Age delivered an hour of swaggering rock.

Sunday moved at a slightly slower pace, with blankets spread out across Discovery Park and fewer attendees compelled to spend every set in a pit.

Aftershock also heads into its next decade with Sacramento secured as its home. A recent agreement with the city extends the festival’s run for another 10 years and leaves room for additional events at Discovery Park.

Tool

Tool closed both Sunday night and the festival with a set that made bombast secondary to the four musicians onstage.

The band isn’t in the middle of a major tour, making its Aftershock appearance feel more like a destination show than another stop. Vocalist Maynard James Keenan also arrived only five weeks removed from hip replacement surgery.

An early problem with Keenan’s in-ear monitors unexpectedly gave fans something else rare at a Tool show: extended stage banter.

“Had enough?” Keenan deadpanned after opener “Stinkfist.”

As technicians worked, he kept going.

Tool performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

“Aftershock, final day, you must be hot and you must smell like shit,” Keenan said. “This is me stalling.”

His recent surgery didn’t seem to affect his voice, though he moved more cautiously than usual and spent much of the performance in the shadows on an elevated platform.

Once the technical issue was resolved, Tool settled into a set that emphasized the interplay between guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor and drummer Danny Carey as much as Keenan’s vocals.

The band opened ambitiously with “Rosetta Stoned” and the sprawling Fear Inoculum title track.

Production remained relatively restrained by festival-headliner standards. Each song brought its own visual treatment across the video screens, while lasers occasionally shot low over the crowd.

“The Grudge” and “H.” followed before “Jambi” put Carey’s thunderous percussion at the center. Chancellor, meanwhile, spent the moments when he wasn’t playing working the crowd from the front of the stage.

Tool isn’t the sort of band that usually inspires forests of phones, but plenty went up Sunday. Fans shouted along to “I don’t mind” during “H.,” while “Pneuma” drew one of the night’s louder reactions.

The band reached back for “Crawl Away” before finishing with the expansive “Invincible” and “Vicarious.”

Keenan, unusually talkative at the beginning, offered no farewell. He simply left the stage, ending both Tool’s set and four days of Aftershock.

Tool performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Danny Elfman

Danny Elfman looked like one of Aftershock’s strangest bookings when the lineup was announced.

By the time he finished, he looked like one of its smartest.

Elfman somehow compressed four decades of work — Oingo Boingo, film and television scores and solo material — into an hourlong performance that made sense even when the ingredients shouldn’t have.

“You’ve probably guessed by now that nothing we do is gonna make any sense up here,” Elfman said early in the set. “It’s a mash of 40 years of material.”

He wasn’t exaggerating.

Danny Elfman performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Elfman arrived with an orchestra and backing vocalists alongside a rock band stacked with veteran players, including drummer Josh Freese, guitarists Nili Brosh and Robin Finck and bassist Matt McJunkins.

The orchestral pieces provided some of the night’s easiest entry points. Themes from “The Simpsons,” “Spider-Man,” “Wednesday,” “Beetlejuice” and “Batman” were recognizable almost immediately.

Elfman generally let those compositions establish themselves in familiar form before the rock band pushed them into heavier territory.

The Oingo Boingo material took the opposite approach.

“Insects,” “Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself)” and “Only a Lad” were rebuilt around aggressive guitar work, turning songs from Elfman’s past into material that fit easily on an Aftershock stage.

“About 30 years ago I did music for a cartoon,” Elfman said. “I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I loved that there was a skeleton named Jack.”

“This Is Halloween,” from “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” followed and sounded surprisingly natural surrounded by distorted guitars and a full orchestra.

Watching Elfman shift between frontman and composer became part of the appeal. At times he sang from center stage; at others he closed his eyes and appeared to follow the arrangement around him, waiting for individual parts to enter.

“We recorded that one in 1970-and-fucking-8,” Elfman joked after “Only a Lad.”

He closed with two more Oingo Boingo songs, “Who Do You Want to Be” and “No One Lives Forever,” ending one of Sunday’s most unlikely sets as one of its best.

Danny Elfman performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Steve Bartek of Oingo Boingo performs with Danny Elfman during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Josh Freese performs with Danny Elfman during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Danny Elfman performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Matt McJunkins performs with Danny Elfman during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Queens of the Stone Age

Queens of the Stone Age returned to Aftershock with an hour of bluesy, swaggering rock that rarely let up.

An array of glowing cables hung behind the band while visuals moved across the large LED screen. Frontman Josh Homme, wearing a plain white T-shirt emblazoned with “scumbag,” kept the focus largely on the songs.

“Regular John” and “Sick, Sick, Sick” opened a 12-song set that drew from across the band’s catalog and differed noticeably from some of the group’s other recent performances.

Homme’s guitar style remained the center of the sound, with the rest of the band locking into the crooked grooves and deliberately rough edges that distinguish Queens of the Stone Age from more polished hard-rock acts.

“I Sat by the Ocean,” “Time & Place” and “Paper Machete” filled out the middle of the set before the band leaned into some of its best-known material.

“Little Sister” hit particularly hard, while Homme stretched out the opening of “Go With the Flow” with a dramatic a cappella introduction.

Queens of the Stone Age finished with “No One Knows” and “A Song for the Dead.”

Before leaving, Homme praised Tool and encouraged fans to stick around for the festival’s headliner.

Queens of the Stone Age perform during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

AFI

AFI packed its Sunday set with some of the most recognizable songs from its catalog, but frontman Davey Havok looked noticeably different doing it.

With long curly hair and a thick mustache, Havok has folded a little glam and classic-rock theatricality into his stage presence. There’s some Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury in the movement, though his unmistakable vocal delivery remains intact.

“Your dedication and resilience in battling the dust and the heat to hear the dulcet sounds of AFI is much appreciated,” Havok said early in the set.

The Ukiah band is touring behind Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, but the new album largely took a back seat to festival favorites.

AFI hit its stride early with “Girl’s Not Grey” and “Love Like Winter,” while Havok repeatedly pushed beyond the stage.

At one point, he climbed into the audience and stood upright above the pit while fans held him aloft.

The band nodded to its Northern California history with “Days of the Phoenix,” named for Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater, before closing with “Silver and Cold” and “Miss Murder.”

“The next feet on this stage will be Danny Elfman’s and that’s a fucking honor for us,” Havok said before the band departed. “Praise Bowie.”

AFI performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

President

Masked rock band President continued its rapid rise with a late-afternoon set on the freeway-adjacent Epicenter Stage.

The later slot was probably a welcome one for four performers wearing masks, suits and jumpsuits after several days of Sacramento heat.

Structurally, the set resembled President’s 2025 opening performance in Oakland with Bad Omens, though the band trimmed some of its theatrics to fit a shorter festival slot.

“Fearless” and “Dionysus” opened the set, with anonymous vocalist The President moving between soulful melodies and harsher screams.

He stepped behind a podium a few times for the prerecorded speeches that help build the band’s mythology, but those interludes were kept brief enough that they didn’t stall the set.

“Destroy Me,” “RAGE” and “Angel Wings” followed, with masked bandmates Heist, Vice and Protest backing The President.

President’s mystery remains part of the appeal, but the larger question is becoming what happens when mystery alone is no longer enough. As more music arrives, the band will have to keep expanding the world it has built around itself.

President performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Filter

Filter’s no-frills afternoon performance became one of Sunday’s strongest surprises.

With less than 40 minutes to work with, Richard Patrick and his band skipped the buildup and packed the set with songs suited to a festival crowd spanning several generations. Patrick remained the focal point. His voice still carries the sharp, abrasive edge that defined Filter’s biggest records, and he could push into higher, harsher notes without losing control.

The band opened with “The Drowning” and “Can’t You (Trip Like I Do),” immediately establishing the mix of industrial rock, grunge and alternative metal that has always made Filter difficult to pin to a single genre.

The former was the lone newer song in a set otherwise built heavily around familiar material.

“It’s fucking hot out here, can we play something mellow?” Patrick asked. “We’re gonna play our summertime hit even though the summer is over.”

That meant “Take a Picture,” which gave the set its lone sustained breather.

“Did that song give you the feels?” Patrick asked afterward. “Well, it’s time for the heavy again.”

He wasn’t kidding.

Filter finished with “Welcome to the Fold” and “Hey Man Nice Shot,” the latter giving Patrick one final chance to unleash the piercing rasp that remains central to the band’s sound.

Filter performs during Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Attendees at Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2026.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at mikedewald.bsky.social.

About The Author

Mike DeWald

Mike DeWald is a Northern California journalist and reporter. Mike has been a Reporter with the Bay Area’s KCBS Radio since 2022, and on staff since 2020. Previously, Mike produced KSRO’s “The Drive with Steve Jaxon” drive-time radio show since 2008, covering news, music, pop culture, politics and more. Mike has contributed to a number of digital music podcasts and publications including the Rock’N Vino Podcast and The Download Parlor. He is an avid live music fan and photographer.

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