Original founding members of legendary German heavy metal band ACCEPT, Peter Baltes and Wolf Hoffmann, made their first “stage dive” and following crowd surfing in their lifetime on July 18th of this year. Where did it happen? Well, as unexpected as it can get - at the Holcim Werkforum und Fossilienmuseum in southern Germany.
Sometimes, it seems, is just to accept your fate and realize that it is never too late for anything. Keeping an open mind can put you into unexpected situations, which allows also for history to be written. This is exactly what happened to Baltes and Hoffmann a few days ago when they paid a visit to the exhibition »Rock Fossils« at the Werkforum in Dotternhausen, southern Germany. The exhibition is an interesting amalgamation of fossils and music featuring sculptures of extinct creatures named after heavy metal, punk and rock icons. This travelling exhibition was the brainchild of palaeontologist Jesper Milàn from Geomuseum Faxe in Denmark, modelmaker Esben Horn from 10Tons Aps and Rune Fjord Studio. The exhibition opened for the first time in 2013 at Geomuseum Faxe (Denmark) where KING DIAMOND turned up and revealed the model of the 400 million years old worm named in his honour, 'Kingnites diamond'. After Faxe, the exhibition travelled to the Natural History Museum in Oslo (Norway), the Natural History Museum in Bern (Switzerland), before it ended up in Dotternhausen with the grand opening ceremonies taking place on July 18th. Albeit small and perhaps remotely located to many, this village is located close to Balingen that annually hosts the festival Bang Your Head!!!. ACCEPT was headlining on the closing day of the festival but before entering the stage that night they found their way to the museum in Dotternhausen.
Baltes and Hoffmann honored the exhibition by showing up and signing autographs. Even before this took place they had kindly let us borrow the original sculpture featured on the album cover of 1985 classic album »Metal Heart« to put on display. They were warmly greeted and were presented with a 180 million year old fossil excavated from the region, probably their first such gift. However, what Baltes and Hoffmann probably did not expect was to find themselves floating across the arms of the invited guests, that included hard core heavy metal fans, researchers, museum and fossil aficionados and everyone in between.
To their great credit, they did it with a smile on their faces, regardless of what was actually going through their minds, and accompanied by roaring cheers and applause. As it turned out, despite being veterans in the business these guys had never before been stage diving or doing crowd surfing. So, we are grateful that they did so at our event. And, some kind of weird history was written in the process: quite honestly, the world premiere of a heavy metal stage dive and crowd surf in a museum. Keep expecting the unexpected!
Order ACCEPT‘s current, outstanding record »Blind Rage« (2014) here:
