In an instant, the rock stars dropped everything and fled the stage, running for their lives alongside 1,000-plus panicked fans. Hughes escaped with his life that night alongside guitarist Eden Galindo, bassist Matt McJunkins, and drummer Julian Dorio, who realized something was very wrong within seconds when the first round of gunshots interrupted their set.

Later, he’d text his EODM co-founder and longtime best friend Josh Homme, who’d stayed home in the states: “Bro everyone got shot… everyone got shot… they took hostages… I have blood all over me.” Hughes and the California rock band he started in 1998 had just begun launching into their song “Kiss the Devil,” from their 2004 album Peace, Love, Death Metal, when men wielding AK-47s and suicide vests began spraying bullets inside the venue in the heart of the 11 th arrondissement. They probably didn’t realize the tattooed, mustachioed man commanding the stage was one of music’s sharpest walking contradictions: Father, frontman, NRA member, and Trump supporter Jesse “The Devil” Hughes-who improbably enough, also happens to be an ordained priest. As heavily armed gunmen stormed the Bataclan the night of the terror attacks that left 130 dead across Paris, it’s possible they were familiar with the night’s headliners, Eagles of Death Metal.

Deathmetal frontman