hazakaza

In the bottle this is sharp leather, which gives me so much hope. On, THIS is the leather blend I have been looking for!!! FINALLY! It's a clean, fresh, brand new leather front and center. The snake oil plays backup and prevents it from being too harsh. The musks are very quiet for me, and I think the black musk is doing the thing it tends to do on me where it goes slightly to powder, which makes the leather a bit more innocent than its naughtiness implies. As it dries down, the leather warms up a bit--I want to call it "hot car seat in the sun" but that doesn't sound as sexy as this is. Even with the Snake Oil dirtying this up and sexing it up, it's just so clean. Like new snakeskin boots.

In the bottle, this smells a little sweeter than I anticipated considering the previous review. The patchouli, musk, and the faintest touch of leather are a delicious, well-blended dry base--maybe with the pitch? I imagine that being a woody sap kind of scent. The juniper-honey at the top providing a kind of gentle powdery sweetness and bracing herbal-fresh note. If you fear fruits in your blend, don't worry about this one--the berries are clean and it's not cloyingly sweet or heavy. As it dries down, it also dries out, letting the juniper and pitch-infused patchouli come to the fore. This is kind of strange, as it still comes out kind of sweetened with just a drizzle of honey on fresh, slightly underripe berries at a distance but up close it's still powdery and dry. It doesn't last very long on my skin, which is fine, as the way it moves and changes is part of the fun of this scent!

I got this because people who say they dislike Satyr attribute that dislike to the civet musk they find in that blend. Putting this on, I have to say I can sense a bit of resemblance. Where Satyr has some coca-cola sweetness to it, Yule Cat is dry and full of sharp woods. This smells like a tanned fur that has recently been worn by someone who traipsed through a forest full of birch and and rowan and dry grass--that's the vetiver, offering up some smokiness too. I'm not getting pine, but lots of wood that seems pine-adjacent, and there's a bit of pleasant astringency to the wood that pulls in an almost camphor direction in a pleasant way that keeps things from getting too sweet or too warm, though it does sweeten on my skin quite a bit. On my skin as it dries down, the musk is warm and fuzzy, reminiscent of Creature Feature. Absolutely love.

In the bottle: this is very sour, almost ammonia-smelling, overtop of incense--which is weird, because this doesn't have incense as a note, and my skin amps any incense note. But I put it on anyway. Annnnnnd... still sour ammonia cat pee incense on my skin. Yikes. I'm in for a wild ride today. As it starts to dry down, the incense takes over and the cat pee does fade. I like so many of the notes in this--red musk is wonderful, white musk is great, and so on--but this just isn't for me.

In the bottle, this is a sharp but sophisticated almost green-apple scent; it's very reminiscent of the very old fabled "green apple variant" of Black Lace, which I had a long time ago. On my skin wet, the fruitiness stays, but the tobacco immediately rears its too-sweet head, which I had feared--and then it immediately gets tamped down under an almost powdery appley tartness and an overwhelming sense of green. This very much lives up to its name! It shares some vine / grass / greenery character with the fresh greenery notes in Rose Red. As it dries down, it does what all apple scents do for me, which is turn a bit powdery, but weirdly I don't mind it so much because it's still being supported by the fresh greenery and the sweetness of the tobacco. The tobacco is very present, since I amp it, but the other notes keep it well in check.

I bought both Dark Delicacies blends because I could not resist! In the bottle Lycan Lace has too many notes to really discern them all. It kind of comes together in a spicy, incense-y blend. Wet on the skin, this starts off with a spicy-sweet musk with some underlying florals. As it dries down, the florals begin to come out in earnest along with the woods; I'm not getting a true fresh rose, here, more of a dried vine. This flirts with the edge of potpourri but never quite goes that far, and the woods and musk really help ground it. This is quite sweet; as it continues to dry, the roses almost come off plummy and fruity with sweetness. The incense running throughout is reminiscent of the Carnival Diabolique incense that runs through that series--a very purple-smelling insence, if that makes any sense. While I tend to prefer dry scents, I don't think this one is oversweetened. Everything is just very blended. For folks looking for something that might seem closer to a conventional perfume but still with an edge, I think Lycan Lace will definitely please!

I've always wanted to enjoy Dorian more than I've actually enjoyed Dorian. I've reached for it a few times but I swapped away my backup bottle and have always reached for Cake Smash over Dorian, or even my homebrewed equal parts Dorian-Doc Constantine-Snake Oil blend over the pure stuff. I love tea, particularly the bergamot-y Twinings Earl Gray Dorian has, and I haven't found a musk that's disagreed with me (and most of them I adore), but overall the effect has been that I don't love the blend as much as I've wanted to. I think this blend solves my problems. The bergamot tea note that makes me reach for Dorian when I do is still front and center, but the florals of the snow really bring it to a new height. It's almost creamy without being *cream* (cream and milk notes tend to go sour on me). The vanilla-sugar also fades and marries with the floral in favor of something I almost want to call vanilla orchid. I've never tried Snow White so I can't speak to how it compares to that, but if this is what Snow White smells like then I might want to see if I can find a decant. This is an absolutely lovely blend and definitely worth a look!

I'm pretty sure Satyr is just a use case that proves that I like pretty much any musk. This doesn't smell like any musk I've worn before; there's the black musk (always a favorite) and brown musk (delicious) and red musk (what really makes Snake Oil sing on my skin) but this is a whole 'nother critter. I almost want to say that the musk that's in this isn't even present in Creature Feature? (Though my Creature Feature is from 2009 and my bottle of Satyr is fresh from the lab 2018, so that might have age factor involved.) I get where people are coming from when they say "hot green musk" but it's hard to describe beyond that--it's got a spice to it, a vigor, a sexiness, but it's impossible to pick out individual notes. Which is kind of a shame, because I'd LOVE to find other scents with these notes! I could imagine a strong clean floral making this more feminine, or leather overtop this musk to really amp up the masculinity--I think this would layer really well with other scents, but it sings beautifully all on its own. This has decent throw and longevity, too. It's always awesome to find another GC you love. Definitely one I'll be reaching for!

I just got a bottle of this on a whim secondhand since I wanted to try more leather blends, and I have to say I'm delighted I did! Black musk is one of my favorite notes and can save even odd blends that shouldn't work on me. It really oils up the leather--makes it more supple, spicier even, almost moving towards the powdery-spice that really old Snake Oil gets. The mint / leather / elemi combination is very reminiscent in the top notes of Volt, which I also love, but instead of being crisp and clean and electric, this is Volt after-hours, or the gritty reboot of Volt: darker, sexier, underscored with warm black musk. The juniper is definitely front and center on my skin, which marries really well with the mint-leather-elemi and honestly makes me wonder if there isn't some of it in Volt as well. It doesn't come off smelling like gin, though--it comes out smelling like the dried juniper berries I crush up for a special marinade I make. It's a wonderful, sexy scent--decidedly masculine, which I don't mind in the least.

This is ABSOLUTELY one to let settle before you really evaluate it. Fresh out of the package from the lab, it was weird, powdery, boring-floral with an odd bitterness. After settling for a week or two it's blossomed into a sweet-green with a floral backdrop. I was hoping for more fir in this one (fir is one of my favorite BPAL notes) and it doesn't have the throw / staying power I was hoping for, but it's still quite lovely, and definitely worth a look if those notes intrigue you!

Reviewing the 2016 version! A tiny bit of backstory for relevant context: I went out of the BPAL community for several years and am just now coming back. I also went off hormonal birth control, which I know changes your body chemistry--I went from hating dirt / grave / wind scents to suddenly loving them and backing way off the foodies I had so many of before. I hated vetiver notes back in the day but have fallen in love with a conventional vetiver perfume (Verde by Nest) and thought Black Ice would be a great reintroduction to BPAL vetiver. And.... baby butt? I am getting 100% baby diaper / powder weirdness out of Black Ice. I am baffled. It smells like a baby wipe in the bottle, on the drydown, and on clothes. If I get my nose reaaaaaally close to where I applied it I can catch a wet pavement kind of smell, which I love, but the throw is all .... baby. There's a lavender-y sharpness going on in the bottle but on me, all baby butt, all the time. Completely bizarre. To the swaps heap it goes!

If you are a patch lover like me who fears the aggressive hippie stink, do not fear the Nasty Woman--she is refined, rich, elegant. The fig is the vice-note in this blend, similar to the fig in Eden--blackened and sugared but not sickly-sweet. The rose and the honeyed vanilla come out as it dries down and the patchouli turns a tiny bit powdery like an a more aged patchouli. I have some 10-year snake oil and the patchoulis are rather similar! It's remarkably well blended and melded and I absolutely agree with the reviewers who say it has a "tobacco" element going on. This strikes me as a patchouli scent that someone who isn't into BPAL might like, or something you could wear to a more formal occasion. I got a half-bottle through a decant circle and am definitely thinking about a backup.

HOLIDAY STRESS RELIEF Relax, revive, restore. Peppermint, spearmint, geranium bourbon, lavender, clary sage, white amber, juniper berry, laurel leaf, coriander, opoponax, and mandarin. Almond oil, refined rice bran oil, fractionated coconut, rosehip seed oil, Lavandula angustifolia, Juniperus communis, Salvia sclarea, Pelargonium graveolens, evening primrose, vitamin E, and our Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume blend. WOW. This stuff is PUNCHY! If you don't want a strongly scented massage oil, this is NOT the stuff for you. This could be a perfume oil all on it's own, and I love that. I typically don't go for peppermint--Spooky, for example, is not quite my cup of tea, and I don't like any of the candy-cane type scents. The spearmint, here, is pretty dominant; the peppermint contributes some astringency, but it's mostly the sweeter, more herbal, more green mint to my nose. The sage, juniper, and lavender all got married to the mint plant. It's a very complex, well-married scent that really sticks to you and holds tight. As it wears down (on my hands and arms) it opens up and gets a bit warmer and creamier, probably from the geranium bourbon and coriander. If you are looking for mint valhalla, this might just be it. For what it's worth, I mixed a bit of this into my conditioner, and my whole bathroom ended up scented, not to mention my hair. It really opened up my sinuses and relaxed me. I think a backup is in order!

This stuff is gorgeous. It's definitely wet leaves and dirt, and, for my bathroom, the apples are playing backup singers to that note. It's unusual, because it's not typically what I go for, but it's goooorgous. It scents my bathroom beautifully too. Really fabulous.

Puddin, I want to bathe in this stuff. Wow. A lot of the lab's pumpkin blends go horribly wrong--cinnamon amping death wrong--so it was a shock how creamy and perfect this stuff is. Buttery, like everyone else says, but not the strong, pungent butter note that's in some other blends--this butter is just in the flaky crust of this pure, unspiced pumpkin pie. There's definitely a bit of vanilla and some white, light musks in there as well. Absolutely stunning. I've already found a 2nd bottle and am sorely tempted to get another inquisition just to end up with a third.