Accept Launch 50th Anniversary Run With Shawn Drover on Drums

Accept stepped into its 50th-anniversary year with a drummer swap that metal fans could feel immediately: Shawn Drover, the former Megadeth stickman, played the band’s first 2026 anniversary concert on May 1 at Karmøygeddon Metal Festival in Kopervik, Norway. For drummers, that is the headline. A veteran band with a half-century of mileage put a new hand on the pulse, and it did so at the start of a Scandinavian run that sets the tone for the rest of the campaign.

Accept billed Drover as a “special guest artist,” not a permanent replacement, which makes the debut even more interesting in a live setting. The May 1 appearance was the opening night of the band’s 50th-anniversary celebrations, and it placed a Canadian drummer known for Megadeth’s 2004 to 2014 era into the framework of one of heavy metal’s most recognizable German institutions. That crossover alone gives the first show extra weight for fans who follow drummers as closely as frontmen.

The location added to the moment. Karmøygeddon Metal Festival ran from April 30 to May 2, and Accept headlined the Friday night slot in Kopervik from 11:40 p.m. to 1 a.m. on the Gassco Stage. It was a late-night, no-frills metal bill built for a crowd that knows the difference between a substitution and a statement. Accept chose the latter, at least for the opening stretch of its anniversary run.

Wolf Hoffmann remains the crucial thread tying the celebration to the band’s origins. The guitarist and founding member has been with Accept since 1976, and his presence makes the 50th-year marker more than a marketing note. With Hoffmann still anchoring the group and Mark Tornillo still at the mic, Drover’s arrival reads as a fresh live-seasoning rather than a reset.

The anniversary schedule continues through Sweden, with Drover also set for the May 3 show in Gothenburg and the May 6 show in Stockholm. Those dates extend the Scandinavian launch before Accept moves deeper into a broader 50th-year campaign that also includes an extensive European tour and a tribute-style release tied to the milestone. For now, the first impression is clear: Accept has put a drummer with a major metal pedigree into the center of its anniversary run, and the set begins with that change in motion.