Swedish Professor of Palaeontology and metal aficionado, Mats E. Eriksson, is launching an exciting new book project. Having a history of combining his love for metal music, arts, science and popular culture he has, among other things, named fossil species after such ikons as Lemmy Kilmister, King Diamond, and Alex Webster. He records and releases metal music with songs about prehistoric creatures and is involved in the highly successful traveling exhibition, Rock Fossils. The latter portrays fossils named after rock stars while simultaneously revealing the stories behind the once living creatures and their strange etymology, as well as the scientists and musicians.

The new full color book, Hårdrocksfossil, is in Swedish and features 41 chapters spread over 289 pages. It contains more than 100 unique paintings, photographs and drawings.

With a witty sense of humor Eriksson describes the “good, bad and the ugly” excavated from the fossil record. He discusses such central issues as Sweden’s most heinous creature, a dinosaur named Scrotum, fossil supermodels, how extinctions can be the key to life, and why and how puke and feces can become preserved in the fossil record and why it matters. Perhaps more importantly, he allows for metal music, arts, science, and popular culture to amalgamate. This includes peculiar anecdotes on, and unique photographs of, Lemmy Kilmister, King Diamond, Accept, Wolf, and Seance, all taking place in a "fossil” setting. Strange? Yes! Exciting? You bet! Horns up to Paleo Metal!

Please support this crazy and cool book project via Kickstarter.

(Pictured above: Niklas "Viper" Stålvind and Wolf playing at a fossil museum in Chemnitz, Germany. Photo: Mike Flemming)