Halfway through this cathartic show, Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes shouts: “Rock and roll will never die!” It’s the sort of off-the-peg, in-the-moment war cry you might hear at many gigs. From Hughes, however, it comes freighted with additional meaning.

Eagles of Death Metal were originally conceived as a joke in a bar in 1998. Now the band will always be associated with violence after their gig at the Bataclan in Paris last November was interrupted by three extremists armed with Kalashnikovs, grenades and suicide vests. The terror attack left 79 people dead.

After surviving that atrocity, it would have been understandable if Eagles of Death Metal had decided to quit. Instead they have thrown themselves back into playing. After appearing as guests of U2 in Paris within a month of the attack, the Californian garage-rockers returned to life on the road in February and have barely stopped since, clocking up almost 70 gigs and festival appearances on their Nos Amis (“Our Friends”) tour.

There have been speed bumps. Hughes, a gun enthusiast who has long cultivated an outlaw image, has made several inflammatory remarks in interviews. His claim in May that he had seen Muslims celebrating in the streets after the Paris attacks were provocative enough that his band were removed from the bill of two French music festivals taking place this weekend. (Instead, Eagles of Death Metal will play Reading and Leeds.)

At their first UK show since the attack, the band take the stage to the unlikely stomp of Shang-a-Lang by the Bay City Rollers. They’re cheered loudly and at length, the sort of reaction usually heard at the end of a triumphant gig rather than before the band have played a single note. It allows Hughes to ritually undo perhaps one too many buttons on his shirt and carefully primp his bushy Doc Holliday moustache.

In a scuzzy 90-minute set of raucous, ratbag rock, the Bataclan experience is referenced only obliquely. It remains unclear whether the Eagles of Death Metal gig was targeted because the band were from the US; for his part, Hughes seems happy to symbolise his country. During the rattling two-chord boogie of I Only Want You, large banners unfurl to reveal Uncle Sam’s iconic recruiting posters recreated with Hughes’s likeness.

You could arguably read something into their plangent reading of Save a Prayer, but the Duran Duran cover was a mainstay of their set before last November. There are no lengthy sermons, despite Hughes’s habit of hollering like an impassioned tent preacher. Instead, there is exhilarating rock burlesque. Hughes vamps. He struts. He repurposes jokes from Airplane. He pulls on a bright red jacket with “Bowie” embroidered on the back before the band play a roughed-up but rather beautiful version of Moonage Daydream.

The closest acknowledgement of their horrific experience comes near the end. “It’s been a strange fucking year and I am so grateful,” says Hughes. His ramshackle band represent the right to make preening, priapic, occasionally obnoxious rock’n’roll, a sentiment that goes over well with the exultant crowd, who radiate a protective positivity. Before a last splurge of excessive guitar solos, Hughes offers one final piece of advice: “Stay horny!”