Caltha

Hellfire Yummy! Pretty much as expected, masculine and warm and cosy. I miss the cherry tobacco described by others but I enjoy the sweet, dry scent of a cosy fire, wood, pipe smoke and perhaps punch.

Zombi It surely lives up to it's description: Earth and dried roses! The combination of generic potpurri rose leafs (which I detest) and true damp earth bordering on compost is really fascinating. The earth makes the dried rose scent seem more "natural" as well, which it actually is, it's just so common as a room scent. Very evocative, the dried roses of the burial or of the long dead lady's room and the damp earth of the grave freshly dug up by the zombie. Very strong and very sweet and actually quite nauseating with the potpourri scent I've never liked, but very fascinating. I have to keep it. Perhaps it suits some moods or some outfits.

Embalming Fluid This is one of the fresh tea scents I adore, in the vein of Kumiho and Shanghai. Citrusy with perhaps a hint of jasmine. The only bad thing I can say about it is that the citrus might smell like a cleaning agent.

Grand Guignol Love the name but the scent is so-so. A sweet & sour scent, like a fruit-flavored dessert or candy with a hint of that schampoo freshness. Overall it's surprisingly light and lacks "body" and boozy warm sweetness. I don't get the brandy at all, only the apricot and I've smelled better apricot.

March Hare I think this is my fav apricot scent after Siren. It's candy sweet but with a sour freshness, very edible indeed. I get canned apricots in syrup with cream. It's also a little tropical and reminds me of DSH's bamboo pulp

The Apothecary This is one of the fresh green tea scents I like a lot but don't love (I love Kumiho for the extra ginger bite). It's grassy, fresh, light and citrusy with that freshness I always associate with schampoo. It's also extremely faint, especially after it dries.

Nemesis After I fell in love with Siren I've decided to try all the other apricot scents as well, although I know it's really the ginger that got me hooked. Nemesis is a morpher, it starts out sharp, bitter, smoky, herbal, ashen, poisonous and woody, and morphs into sweet candy fruits with perhaps vanilla even. ...and then I read the description, which I always do after writing the review, and realized this was one of the scents I tried out because of the ginger, not because of the apricot. Funny. Then where does the candy fruit come from?

Yerevan Seems like apricot is the one fruit/berry scent that works with me, and I don't even fancy apricots. Yerevan is sweet with an interesting citrusy bite and it dries to mild, sweet, artificial candy fruits, but it's rather nice, not the killer candy fruits I get with other fruit scents.

The Lady of Shalott This one has a certain floral scent I read as "melon" and I'm not a fan of melon (except for water-), I think melons completely lack freshness. However, it also has a bite of ginger I'm a great fan of so that makes me still like it. A very watery and juicy floral, perhaps lily of the valley, with that not-so-fresh melon sweetness. Later it turns a little soapy but I still like it for that ginger bite and the juiciness.

Penitence This is a penitence alright. A strong, sharp incense scent with bitter herbs, very masculine. It gets a little sweeter as it dries, but in a bad way, smoky sweet like burnt plastic.

Hymn This is a weird one: pure mosquito repellant on my skin. It has no sweetness whatsoever, only chemical sharpness. The only thing that happens with it is that it gets fainter, too faint to be as repulsive anymore.

Ave Maria Gratia Plena I got this for a christian friend, it's nothing I would have bought for myself. As expected, it's floral, generic, soapy and perhaps vaguely herbal. I get "resins", something sharp like that, but the sharpness dissappears as it dries and instead of getting more soapy as usual it gets milder and sweeter, a quite pleasant sort of powdery floral.

Sea of Glass I expected nothing of this, it was for a friend. If anything, I guessed that the "sea" and "glass" would mean aquatic and ozone, which are bad on me. Instead, it's a fresh youthful floral, lilies of the vally perhaps. It dries a little sweeter, with perhaps a hint of vanilla, very girlie and innocent and not overly majestic

Seraphim Well - I never did expect to like this, it was for a christian friend. It starts out as chokingly sweet flowers, lilies and roses (biblical enough I guess), an almost rottening sweetness. Then it dries to incensey, oriental, only vaguely floral, soap. What's with all the soap these days, is it my skin or did I only pick up too many risky floral scents?

Wings of Azrael I bought a set of christian theme imps for a friend and this was perhaps the only one I thought I might like myself. I get some coniferous wood and perhaps a hint of ginger, something that reminds me of my beloved Siren, other than that it's skarp and orental. It dries sharper still to sweet, woody soap. Damn my soap-chemistry, but I have more perfumes than I could ever use anyway...

Lust A freebie I didn't fancy. Unpleasant oriental incense with a sharp herbal bitterness. It stays the same, more or less, turns perhaps to more of an incensey oriental floral soap.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci A freebie I wouldn't have picked up by myself, too flowery, and I was right. It's a sharp, classic, soapy old ladies floral, lily of the valley perhaps, drying to even more soap, a mild and floral guest soap but still soap.

Oberon I got this as a freebie although I might have picked it up by myself sooner or later. Glad I didn't since it doesn't work on my skin. Flowers rarely do. I get sharp, spicy, citrusy, woody, soapy floral perfume drying to even sharper soap. Warm, woody, spicy soap but still soap. Weirdly, in the long run it morphs to honey-drenched incense without any of the soapy sharpness.

Perversion Perversely sweet on me, a sugar overdose with none of the darkness the name might hint to except maybe for a hint of leather. I get candy, chocolate, caramel with a choking cloud of roses lingering in the air around me. My girlfriend said "apple pie!" when she met me, and although I don't get any apples I see where she got the sweet cake association from. This is strong and lasting, beware of the sugared rose vapours, they might knock people around you dead, and not merely from excitation.

Nosferatu This is truly original and lives up to it's name. It's also one of BPAL's more "natural" scents, meaning that it might be detectably artificial but doesn't smell like anything common in perfumes. It starts out as a harsh, bitter, cold, moist citrusy/herbal scent, smelling like stone, earth and grass. It dries less bitter but still very dark: citrus, fresh leaves, grass and damp earth. I marvel at how it can be so fresh without being light and schampoo generic, on the contrary it's very dark, dark and damp and moist like black earth at nighttime. I don't get any wine, none of Nosferatu's refined count sides, only the demonic cave dweller and vampire sleeping in his grave, but that's fine with me.

Pele Starts out as a very "flat" and generic schampoo fresh flower perfume. As it dries it gets sweeter fuller and more powdery, an oriental/tropic scent with hints of coconut or vanilla perhaps. Not my favourite,

Whitechapel Surprisingly sweet and not at all masculine. This is basically a flowery scent, lilac or lily of the valley. Then the lime comes out and oh how I adore lime. It all comes down to a nice, cute, girlie, powdery blend of lime and sweet flowers, Jack the Ripper's victims rather than the ripper himself. I might have liked it better if it was more fresh lime and less sweet flowers though, it is a bit uncomplicated and young and innocent, hardly a Whitechapel whore but perhaps her misguided choice of alluring cologne.

Verdandi BPAL's apple doesn't like me, as I can already tell from Hesperides. It's a musty sweet baked apple, but in Verdandi it also has a touch of schampoo fresh fake apple. Unfortionarely none of the crisp freshness of actual apple. The combination of sweet baked apple with caramel and minty Vick's apple stays as it dries, and it also turns sort of powdery. Not bad but not very good either.

Black Annis This one's weird and surely lives up to it's name. I like it at first, it's a warm and cosy scent of moss and anise, not bitter and masculine like the forest scents usually are. But as it dries the animal comes out and, well, urinates. It gets sweeter and warmer still, somewhere in between cosy and gross. I'm afraid gross wins.

Centzon Totochtin This one's an original favourite. It's sort of sour and fruity and sweet and at the same time woody/spicy/dry/dark. I detect cocoa, mmmm. As it dries it blends together to a sweet, warm, cosy oriental mix of wood, spice and candy, still a little sour in a pleasant way.