US band Eagles of Death Metal's return to Paris on Tuesday was a "sacred duty," frontman Jesse Hughes said, in order to finish the concert that was interrupted by a terrorist attack by Daesh on November 13.
The band's concert at the Bataclan concert hall was cut short when three men stormed the building, killing 90 people, including those who died of their wounds afterwards. The attack was part of a coordinated series across Paris in which 130 people were killed.
"I look at trying to just finish the set so that everyone can kind of leave some of this bad stuff behind and make more room in here [gesturing to heart] for better stuff," Hughes said in an interview with French broadcaster iTele.
"I can't let the bad guys win. I have to be with my friends again. We have to finish this, not for anyone else, just for us. Of course I'm talking about everyone who was at the Bataclan," Hughes added.
The show is scheduled to be held at the Olympia theatre. Concert-goers who survived the Bataclan attack will be able to attend free of cost, the band said when they announced the concert in December.
Band members, who opened for U2 in Paris in December, paid their respects at a makeshift memorial at the concert hall at the time.
Bataclan's management said earlier this month that they are doing "everything possible" to re-open by the end of the year, and Hughes said that he hopes his band can be the first to play there again.
In the often tearful interview, Hughes also said he hoped to visit the survivors of the attacks who remain in hospital, in particular an off-duty police officer who was shot in the back and who is unable to walk.
Many of those wounded in the attacks across Paris and at the music hall suffered grave injuries, and former justice minister Christiane Taubira said in mid-January that 41 people were still hospitalized.
Hughes, responding to a question posed by the interviewer, also repeated his support for gun ownership, saying that allowing more people to carry guns would have prevented some of the November 13 deaths.
"Did your French gun control stop a single f#$king person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I'd like to hear it, because I don't think so.
"I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I have ever seen in my life charging headfirst into the face of death with their firearms," he added. "I think the only way my mind has been changed is maybe that until nobody has guns everybody has to have them."
Security at the Olympia theatre has been heightened leading up to Tuesday's performance, with hundreds of additional police deployed around the downtown venue. Tickets for the show have sold out on online ticket platforms.
"You're seeing right now an expression of ultimate love, really," Hughes said. "The amount of anticipation for us to come back ... I don't know which was of greater intensity: the need for us to come back or the need for our fans to have us back. And that's love."
