patina

Amber and moss. I'm strongly reminded of Lyonesse, except Gambols has a floral element and no sandalwood. It's warmer than that scent, golden, and a bit like scented tissues, which must be the olive blossom.

The pulpy coconut mixes with the white musk and white florals like it does in Snow White, but the florals are more tropical and there's a generous amount of ginger. The whole thing has a lemony cast to it. This would be a delicious drink.

It is pretty faint, but then I guess even hardened black musk lovers like me don't want to smell like they've been dipped in the stuff. Cedar can be overwhelming too but it's well behaved here and gently rounded by the incense. As it is, this is exactly what I want my hair to smell like, when I can smell anything at all. If only there was a perfume version. I'm sad I don't have long hair.

Dandelions! Faintly soapy but not offensive, I smell like I rolled around in springtime. I'm also reminded of Galbanum SN. Is there a resin here? As this dries down the cypress and moss become more prominent and it begins to smell more like a fall scent. Damp grass indeed, well blended with the heavier slightly medicinal cypress and moss.

Deep rich burgundy with a lighter carnation element. The spices aren't strong enough to trigger sneezing. The patchouli is present. It almost smells like red patchouli. Cozy scent, but might not be for people who dislike patchouli as a room scent.

Just as promised, slightly smoky beeswax, vanilla cake and leather (the leather fades after the initial spray, becoming less prominent.) I also get paper, but I sprayed it in a room with a lot of books, so it's hard to tell what is the room and what is the spray. Some of it is certainly the spray though. Cozy! Editing to say this smells like a thick slice of faintly lemony vanilla cake mixed with Candlelight atmosphere spray and old books. It's good. Edit: Apparently long after I quit smelling it, I still get the occasional sniff of candle smoke.

Sweet snow and fungus-y graveyard dirt. The labdanum and opoponax almost smell like root beer. Almost, but not quite. Then they subside and I mostly get a faintly smoky mint (which is the birch). I also get almost! tobacco. The wood and birch may be contributing to that. It's too clean to be tobacco really, but that's what I'm reminded of.

Out of the unimaginable blackness beyond the gangrenous glare of that cold flame, out of the Tartarean leagues through which that oily river rolled uncanny, unheard, and unsuspected, there flopped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember. They were not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats, nor decomposed human beings; but something I cannot and must not recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet and half with their membraneous wings; and as they reached the throng of celebrants the cowled figures seized and mounted them, and rode off one by one along the reaches of that unlighted river, into pits and galleries of panic where poison springs feed frightful and undiscoverable cataracts.
 Membranous green mandarin with dread-choked black sandalwood, opoponax, pine tar, mimosa, mugwort, and acrid tagetes. Immediately on applying I smell camphor, but that vanishes quickly. I get citrus, but a sort of herbal citrus. The mugwort is strong here, silvery and herbal. It must be what I mistook for camphor. I can't really pick out the sandalwood or tagetes. Yes, it's a little sour, maybe even acrid, but the opoponax and mimosa seem to be doing their part to keep it from being a screeching sour horror. I do like mugwort and here it smells very delicate and silvery. It's not unlike the lab's White Sage SN. My mother tells me this smells to her like nice soap (must be the sandalwood) and cedar.

First applied, this is straight-up strawberry candy. Nothing but. It makes my teeth hurt. After a while it becomes more juicy and I can detect some subtle woods beneath. The white musk occasionally makes it smell clean, like a fancy fruit shampoo but it never turns to straight up soap. The woods here are really giving the scent some much-needed balance and sophistication though they stay subtle and in the background. The throw is fairly low on me.

Opening I get the sense that there's lavender in this, but that disappears when I apply it. Are those crushed narcissiuses along with the grass? They disappear quickly too. It is cold and chilly and gray as promised and I do smell stone and plenty of crushed grass. Ozony and near aquatic. Similar to Amsterdam.

Green, melon-y, probably has green tea, maybe bamboo, but it doesn't smell woody at all. The best comparison would probably be Embalming Fluid. This is less lemony though.

I get cocoa. Like very dry chocolate cookies. There's a strong floral perfume component that clashes, but the scent settles down pretty quickly. It's odd. The over the top old fashioned floral should scream old lady, but instead it seems kind of young, not subtle, like a child dressed up in her grandmother's clothes. Or a little girl's bonnibel cosmetics mixed with old fashioned perfume. It morphs between cocoa and straight up florals. Also I get the sense of orange somewhere. Like those orange circus peanut candies. I imagine this as pink, white, and brown. It's safe to say I've never smelled anything quite like this.

A blast of banana candy and yellow cake quickly turns to almost a SN Vanilla with bananas and sweet cream.

Smells like autumn. The nuts and leather and red musk are the most noticeable to me though there's vanilla in here. Not nearly as strong as expected and there's a disturbing white bread note that turns things to peanut butter sandwiches. It goes pretty light. Cozy. Patchouli comes out more on the drydown.

Big lemony florals, reminding me of Devil's Trumpet SN. There are some dark green tropical leaves like those in Isle of Demons and maybe black musk? This is a warm, close, sweet scent. Very sultry. Maybe good for winter if you want to pretend to be in a sweltering jungle or hothouse. Rawr. Edit: on drydown becomes more intensely green and dark. It's not a pine or other conifer but it has that feel to it. There may be patchouli somewhere.

Delicious in an El Dia Los Reyes sort of way. It does have a vanilla powder element and sometimes is not as deep or rich as I'd like but overall a really good coffee scent. Maybe there's cinnamon sprinkled on top of the tiramisu? Because I get just a tiny bit of that.

Sadly the reed pings my scent memory as window cleaner. It's green and the most prominent part before the drydown. As it dries, I get more dusty papyrus and that smear of vanilla cake frosting. It's as though someone smeared an old papyrus scroll with cake and used windex to get it off. A memorable scent story, but not something I need a bottle of. For those who don't have the same scent associations this might smell like vanilla frosting, dust and green cologne.

Isidore's Phonenix has more floral and isn't grapey at all but otherwise it's not bad. LE but maybe you could find it on the sales page. Feathers of deep plum and wild violet darkly gleaming with myrrh, black amber, and benzoin.

I tried the original, and I seem to remember it was heavily opium and floral, very perfumy. This one immediately starts out smelling like dirty hippie patchouli, tobacco and red berries. Somehow it smells like spicy red berries. After the drydown, the patchouli starts behaving itself and quiets down to a whisper. There really isn't a lot of throw with this one, but occasionally I get a lovely waft of florals. Slinky, feminine, close to the skin.

This is a really pretty fruity floral. I get glimpses of the gardenia underneath the apple. The snake oil is present but not in a very obvious way. Sadly the orange and lemon peel are just awful on my skin and I can't do citrus.

I have a very aged bottle of the original and I wanted to see if this stacked up. The almond, snake oil, and fizzy myrrh are the same, but the orange smells a little lighter, tarter, more orange-y. I have no idea if this is due to the different notes or to the effects of aging. Still, this is my favorite of the snakes and to my tastes, none of them stack up to this one. The snake oil and almond smell like cake, the orange acts like a cake glaze and the myrrh deepens it and prevents the whole scent from being too cloying.

Odd. A sweet fruity coffee bean similar to Destructive Vagina of the Fox Woman. There's the same undertone of incense, only here it is more of an undertone. The myrrh blooms after application, but that's just on my skin. Your results may vary depending on how you do myrrh. The vetiver is there, but there's no whoa!bacon vetiver. It's warm, dry and cuddly, something like a relative of Palmyria. Or of Death Adder without the Snake Oil and coconut.

Druid from the RPG line fades rather quickly on some people and smells like wool as well as forest but it's one of the truest damp forest scents I've smelled. It's not piney so no floor-cleaner worries.

Grass juice! Beautiful, warm, sunny. If it was a color it would probably be kelly green.

This would probably do better with some aging, but I get very, very rich dark clove musk and patchouli that I originally misidentified as tobacco, probably because of the smoke. I was worried about the "scorched" bit but while there's some faint smoke it doesn't make the whole thing smell like a bonfire at all. Like clove and base notes? Try this. It's like a less woody Smiling Spider.