The band that was playing on Friday evening at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, where about 100 people were killed in one of a wave of attacks on the city, has an inadvertently alarming name: Eagles of Death Metal.
Some people on social media found the name disturbing. Others mistook it as an indication that the group plays death metal — a particularly dark subgenre of heavy metal — leading to a few insistent corrections on Twitter as well as carefully worded explanations from television news anchors.
In fact, the group, from Palm Desert, California, mixes driving blues-rock of 1970s vintage with a heavy dose of humour. For fans of Eagles of Death Metal, the band’s name is part of its irreverent charm.