ACCEPT Members 'Stage Dive' - At A Museum!

Peter Baltes and Wolf Hoffmann, founding members of legendary German heavy metal band ACCEPT, had the very first stage diving and crowd surfing experience of their lives on July 18 at the most unlikely of places — at the "Holcim Werkforum Und Fossilienmuseum" ("Rock Fossils") event at the Werkforum in Dotternhausen, Southern Germany.

"Holcim Werkforum Und Fossilienmuseum" 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-year-old worm named in his honor, Kingnites Diamond. After Faxe, the exhibition travelled to the Natural History Museum in Oslo (Norway),the Natural History Museum in Bern (Schwitzerland),before it ended up in Dotternhausen, with the grand opening ceremonies taking place on July 18. 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 the exhibition borrow the original sculpture featured on the album cover of ACCEPT's classic 1985 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 did not expect was to find themselves floating across the arms of the invited guests, including hardcore 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 their stage dive was accompanied by roaring cheers and applause. As it turned out, despite being veterans in the business, these guys had never before done any stage diving or crowd surfing. And some kind of weird history was written in the process: the world premiere of a heavy metal stage dive and crowd surf in a museum.