Dark Lord Day History Thread

This thread is an effort to compile information on all the previous years of Dark Lord Day. As time goes on, details get fuzzy, articles become harder to find. There are well written recaps for the more recent years, but quality information on the first few years especially is hard to come by. My own memory of past Dark Lord Days begins to meld and it can become difficult to differentiate what happened what year. People always seem to have arguments over details, so I thought it would be nice to have an organized thread.

If anyone else thinks this project is interesting, please comment with any details and resources you have. Ticket prices? Bands? Allocations? Bottles produced. Number of Attendees? Good pictures or video. Etc.. are the type of details I am looking for here. I'll start this off with what I have. Please let me know if I made any mistakes.

Dark Lord Day History

2002-2003
Dark Lord was first brewed in 2002, only 5 barrels were produced. Apparently Starbucks coffee was used in one of the early batches (2002 or 2003?) before they switched to Intelligentsia. Other early ingredients included molasses, honey, and vanilla.

2004
Details: First bottling of Dark Lord. (Was the release actually called Dark Lord Day in 2004?)
Date: ?
Wax Color: Red
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of Attendees: ?
Allotment: no limit

2005
Details: First official Dark Lord Day. This was before the brewpub was open, everyone fit inside the brewery.
Date: April 29, 2005
Wax Color: Orange
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of Attendees: A couple hundred
Allotment: no limit



2006
Details: First year the event really became huge. Dark Lord had reached the top of RateBeer's best beers in the USA list and was ranked number 2 in the world. Certainly this contributed to the growing hype for Dark Lord.
Date:
Wax Color: Gold
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of Attendees: 1 or 2 thousand?
Allotment: ?
Variants: 2005 Woodford Reserve Dark Lord on draft, 12 750ml swingtop bottles produced and given to employees/friends. Also heard that a few were raffled off at the event?

2007
Details: The line to buy Dark Lord got up to 5 hours long this year. First year bands played at the festival. They played inside the brewery, which was somewhat cramped.
Date:
Wax Color: Silver
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: 3 or 4 thousand?
Allotment: 6 per person
Variants: ?
Bands:
Dreadnok Ripper
Imperial Battle Snake
Bible of the Devil

2008
Details: Lines were even longer than 2007. The one major detail I have from a friend who attended was a long line of people still waiting for Dark Lord when they announced they were sold out. These were people who waited all day. First year Vanilla Bean Dark Lord was available on draft.
Date:
Wax Color: Black
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: ?
Allotment: ?
Variants: Oak Aged and Vanilla Bean were available draft only.
Bands:
Den of Vipers 11:30-12:30
German Girls 12:30-1:30
Dynasty of Posiedon 1:30-2:30
Rabid Rabbit 2:30-3:30
Mucca Pazza marching around 3:00-4:00
Sybris 4:30-5:30
Imperial Battle Snake 6-7
Mucca Pazza stage show 7:30-8:30
Bible of the Devil 9-10
Minsk 10-11

2009
Details: First year tickets were required to purchase Dark Lord. Tickets were easily counterfeited however, and because of that allotments had to be cut late in the day. People were able to get multiple allotments if they had multiple tickets. You could still attend the festival without tickets.
Date: April 25, 2009
Wax Color: White
Bottles Produced:
Number of attendees:
Allotment: 4 per person
Variants: ?
Ticket Details: Tickets were $10, the site crashed under the load causing much frustration. Tickets were sold direct from Three Floyd's site? Sold at 4:25 am on St. Patrick's Day. 3/17/2009.
Bands:
Pelican
Waco Brothers
Sybris
Bible of the Devil

2010
Details: The same easily counterfeited tickets were used again this year. Bottles of 2009 Dark Lord were also available for sale this year. Tickets were required for an allotment, but you could attend without tickets. By this year the grounds around Three Floyds were full of people setting up camping chairs, grills, tents etc.. all around
Date: April 24, 2010
Wax Color: Green
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: 10,000 to 12,000
Allotment: 4 per person, but you could swap one 2010 for a 2009 and purchase 3 2010s + 1 2009.
Variants: Vanilla Bean Dark Lord draft only
Ticket Details: Tickets were $10, sold on St. Patrick's Day 3/17/2010. Tickets were sold on a Shopify site setup by FFF, again the site crashed.
Bands:
Monotonix
Sweet Cobra
Sybris
Imperial Battlesnake

2011
Details: Several big changes were made this year. They put up fences around the grounds, and only allowed entry to ticket holders. The tickets were sold from an actual ticket seller and tickets had bar codes so that they were not easily counterfeited. This is also the first year barrel aged variants were bottled and available via scratch off. No grills were allowed, along with the fences caused this year to be much more crowded, everyone was stuck inside the gates making the lines for drafts very tight. Coolers and folding chairs were allowed inside, creating large bottlenecks inside.
Date: April 30, 2011
Wax Color: Yellow
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: ?
Allotment: 4 per person
Variants: Pappy Van Winkle, Brandy, Brandy Vanilla, De Muerte. Draft variants only available inside the brewpub causing a very long line (5+ hours), to get into the brewpub.
Ticket Details: Tickets were $10 and were sold through an online ticket broker (which one?) on Saturday March 19th, 2011.
Bands:
Indian
Sweet Cobra
Lair of the Minotaur
Bible of the Devil
Slough Feg
Sybris

2012
Details:
Date:
Wax Color: Red
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: ?
Allotment: 4 per person
Variants: Bourbon Vanilla Bean, Bourbon, Cognac De Muerte, Cognac
Ticket Details: $15 a ticket.
Bands:
Argonauts
Powermad
High on Fire
eyehategod

2013
Details: First year artwork was changed. Also first year to greatly expand event space using the parking lot of the building just north of the brewery and utilizing space across the street from the brewery. They also blocked off the street, adding to the event space. The bands played on a stage outside, which was a huge improvement over having them play in the brewery warehouse.
Date: April 27, 2013
Wax Color: Orange
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: ?
Allotment: 4 per person
Variants: Bourbon Vanilla Bean, Port, Moscatel
Ticket Details: $30 a ticket. Sold through Music Today.
Bands:
11 am Bloodiest
12:30 pm Lair of the Minotaur
2 pm Sweet Cobra
4 pm Pig Destroyer
6 pm Municipal Waste
8 pm High on Fire

2014
Details: First year General Admission tickets were sold. These tickets allowed entry to the festival, but did not allow for the purchase of Dark Lord bottles.
Date: April 26, 2014
Wax Color: Red
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: ?
Allotment: 4 per person
Variants: Bourbon Vanilla Bean, Brandy, Earl of Biggleswade
Ticket Details: $30 a ticket. Sold through Crowd Surge. General Admission tickets were sold via a lottery system, also for $30 a ticket.
Bands:
Witchbanger 12:30pm – 1:15pm
Iron Reagan 1:45pm – 2:30pm
Brain Tentacles 3:00pm – 3:45pm
Corrections House 4:15pm – 5:00pm
Vulgaari 5:30pm – 6:15pm
EYEHATEGOD 7:00pm – 8:00pm
High On Fire 8:30pm – 9:45pm


2015
Details:
Date: April 25, 2015
Wax Color: Purple?
Bottles Produced: ?
Number of attendees: ?
Allotment: 4 per person
Variants: TBD
Ticket Details: $40 a ticket. Sold through eTix. GA tickets $30.
Bands: TBD

This post is a work in progress, will continue to update.

 

I forgot BA doesn't let you edit posts after 15 minutes, will make this thread somewhat difficult. Will just have to post updates and make a new updated post later in the thread.

 

Yeah I copied and pasted and was editing the post when the edit timer ran out.

 

Yeah I remember those. I think they were actually safer than the cardboard carriers. Pulling the waxed bottles out of those actually took some force.

Funny thing, I didn't even purchase the entire 6 bottle allotment in 2007. I found the idea of buying 6 $15 bottles ridiculous. In retrospect of course...

 

To break things down I am going to summarize some elements in individual posts. I am pretty sure the band lineups are accurate. If anyone has any information about bands playing in 2006, let me know.

Dark Lord Day Bands List

2007
Dreadnok Ripper (Video)
Imperial Battle Snake
Bible of the Devil

2008
Den of Vipers 11:30-12:30
German Girls 12:30-1:30
Dynasty of Posiedon 1:30-2:30
Rabid Rabbit 2:30-3:30
Mucca Pazza marching around 3:00-4:00
Sybris 4:30-5:30
Imperial Battle Snake 6-7
Mucca Pazza stage show 7:30-8:30
Bible of the Devil 9-10
Minsk 10-11

2009
Pelican
Waco Brothers
Sybris
Bible of the Devil

2010
Monotonix (Video 1) (Video 2)
Sweet Cobra (Video 1) (Video 2)
Sybris
Imperial Battlesnake

2011
The Lonesome Organist (Video)
Indian
Sweet Cobra (Video 1) (Video 2)
Lair of the Minotaur
Bible of the Devil
Slough Feg
Sybris

15th Anniversary Party (just for completions sake)
Melvins (Video 1) (Video 2) (Video 3)
Municipal Waste (Video)
Sweet Cobra
Young Widows
Gorch Fock
Sybris

2012
Argonauts
Powermad
High on Fire (Video 1) (Video 2) (Video 3) (Video 4)
eyehategod (Video 1) (Video 2) (Video 3) (Video 4)

2013
Bloodiest - 11 am
Lair of the Minotaur - 12:30 pm
Sweet Cobra - 2 pm
Pig Destroyer - 4 pm (Full Set) (Video 1)
Municipal Waste - 6 pm
High on Fire - 8 pm (Full Set)

2014
Witchbanger - 12:30pm - 1:15pm (Video 1)
Iron Reagan - 1:45pm - 2:30pm
Brain Tentacles - 3:00pm - 3:45pm (Full Set) (Video 1)
Corrections House - 4:15pm - 5:00pm (Full Set) (Video 1)
Vulgaari - 5:30pm - 6:15pm
EYEHATEGOD - 7:00pm - 8:00pm (Video 1)
High On Fire - 8:30pm - 9:45pm (Full Set)

 

Dark Lord Wax Colors

2004 - Red
2005 - Orange
2006 - Gold
2007 - Silver
2008 - Black
2009 - White
2010 - Green
2011 - Yellow
2012 - Red
2013 - Orange
2014 - Blue

Here is a good picture of 2004-2009 Dark Lord bottles

Here is a good picture of 2009-2014 Dark Lord bottles