Reuters
LOS ANGELES
The California-based rock band Eagles of Death Metal, whose Paris concert was turned into a bloodbath by gunmen opening fire on the audience during their performance, has returned to the United States and suspended all further shows, the group said in a statement on Wednesday. All the musicians in the band survived Friday night’s attack unharmed, but the group’s merchandise manager, Nick Alexander, 36, a Briton, and three executives from the band’s parent record label, Universal Music Group, were among the scores of people killed in the massacre. The statement, posted on social media outlets of the Eagles of Death Metal, was the first official word on the band’s whereabouts since the attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris while the band was playing there.
The Bataclan was one of several sites around Paris targeted by gunmen and bombers in what French authorities have said was a coordinated assault that left 129 dead in all. The majority of the victims were killed at the music hall. It was not made clear when the musicians returned to U.S. soil. Representatives from Universal Music and the band’s management were not immediately available for comment.
Band co-founder Jesse Hughes and other members of the group, which also goes by the acronym EODM, were in the middle of a European tour promoting the recent release of their fourth album, “Zipper Down.” The band’s other principal member, Josh Homme, rarely tours with the group and was not in Paris on the night of the attack. “While the band is now home safe, we are horrified and still trying to come to terms with what happened in France,” the band’s statement said. It concluded: “All EODM shows are on hold until further notice.” The band had been scheduled to end its 32-city European tour in December with a stop in Portugal. It played only 11 of those dates before Friday’s tragedy.

Eagles of Death Metal was founded in the late 1990s in Palm Desert, California, by Hughes and Homme, lifelong friends and the only two permanent members. Other notable names among EODM’s rotating roster of members have at times included actor-musician Jack Black and Dave Grohl, frontman of the American rock band Foo Fighters.