UploadedLobster

WAUGH. First, it was berry-scented urinal cakes. Now, it's unscented urinal cakes. This is so, so bad. Chemicals and fake fruit and plastic and eugh. Never touching this again.

Wet on skin: Grapey-orangey tartness, indistinct florals, honey. Nice. Dry on skin: Goodbye grapes, hello musk. It's not a heavy musk, sort of a pale golden thing. Fits perfectly into the honey. Drydown: Honey and BEESWAX! Oooh, this is good! I suppose that faint tinge of floral must be the ylang ylang. I'm really impressed. From a nondescript wine-and-honey thing at the start (just like Anubis, Kali, Delphi, etc), it's turned into this really rich beeswax scent. This isn't like anything else I've tried. Lobster Rating Better than: hot buttered toast

I smile! Hot brown sugar, a little bit of spicy incense, and musk. Red musk, I think, black usually goes nasty on me and this doesn't. Everything in this blend is sweet, dark, and sexy. I feel like some gorgeous syrupy dessert wearing it. Seems like the incense comes out a little stronger after a while, the sugar clears out just a bit, but the basic character stays the same. DEFINITELY one for the Super-Win file. Lobster Rating Better than: red satin gloves

Another bummer that I wanted so badly to work. The notes list reads like a tally of Stuff My Skin Loves, so what went wrong? It's dragon's blood, all the way through. All the other notes seem to be drowned out, which is a real trick given how noticeable myrrh and labdanum usually are. No hint of the leather or black pepper, either; if they're there, it's extremely subtle. Too subtle for my nose. I wouldn't mind having a strong dragon's blood scent, either, except this is apparently the kind of dragon's blood that turns to lilacs. PLTHLECH. BLEARGH. No resin, no benzoin sweetness, no spiciness, none of those 'fire and steel' notes--just LILACS. Instead of a dark, powerful, resinous scent, I got me a spring floral here. So disappointed. Lobster Rating Better than: tetanus

Renfield is, indeed, batshit nuts. At first this was a masculine mossy blend, a little neroli sharpness mixed in, and then two minutes later it turns to frickin' TUBEROSE? What the hell now. Where's my cumin? Where's my balsam? And where's the damn patchouli? I'm really disappointed. I had high hopes for it as a nice dark, earthy scent, and I especially wanted that cumin note. Nothin'. I don't know where this rose thing is coming from, maybe it's what happens when you combine neroli and moss or something, but it's unmistakably rose now. Fake, girly, froofy rose. Bath-salt rose. And it's not going away. I hate it. EDIT: the next morning, it's morphed into this hideous stale powder rose that makes me smell like an old lady who smokes and it still hasn't gone away MY GOD RENFIELD WHY MUST YOU SUCK SO BAD Lobster Rating Better than: a fork in yer eye

I am in sweet sweet love with this oil now. It's not a morpher--what you get is what you get, pretty much, until it's gone. And that takes a while. Like most resinous blends, Laudanum sticks around for hours. I'm going to forego the usual wet-dry-dryer breakdown in favor of a three-word description that describes the whole affair from bottle to hours later: CHINESE APOTHECARY SHOP. That's it right there. This IS the smell of a Chinese apothecary shop, with its innumerable jars of dried medicinal plants and sweet resins, and its incense and dust. It perfectly duplicates the entire olfactory experience of walking into such a shop. And if you like that sort of thing, which I do, Laudanum is heaven in a bottle. It's so evocative, it's almost hallucinatory. Beautiful. Lobster Rating Better than: reincarnating as a housecat

Wow. Not one I'd have ever picked up on my own; again we see the wisdom of the Lab's frimp policy. This is going in my next order. In the vial, there's a hint of sweetness, probably the labdanum, some kind of light resin which I can't place, gentle spice, and a non-cloying floral. That's saying a lot, for me--normally flowers go BOOM on my skin and I hate 'em. This is really, REALLY nice. Once it's on it doesn't seem to have much throw but I get a waft of it every now and then and it's just so ELEGANT. Austere, almost, but the little bit of sweetness makes it warmer and more comforting. And those flowers still haven't jumped out to stomp all over the rest of the notes. I'm impressed! Geez. I'm trying to pick out notes and I just can't, it's such a complex and well-mixed blend. But it's beautiful. Very adult. On the days when I don't want to smell like a bake shop or a spice cabinet, I think I want to smell like this. Lobster Rating Better than: socks fresh out of the dryer

Gwhlaaaagh. Urk. Blech! I wanted to love it, honestly I did. I'm a great fan of patchouli, cedar, and apricot individually, so having them all together seemed like a guaranteed good time. Alas, no. Right away, the cedar jumps out and trounces the patchouli, which is a real shame because patchouli's earthiness would be the perfect bridge between cedar's sharp resin and the sweetness of apricot. (this apricot is dried, by the way, maybe stewed or glacee. Very smooth, not tart.) Normally prunus notes (almond, plum, cherry, peach, apricot) disappear within minutes on me, but this one didn't. It stuck, valiantly hanging on to my skin while the cedar careened around going WOOOOOO I AM BIG AND STRONG LOOKIT MEEEEE. The next day I could still smell it wafting around me--this sucker lasts, which is great, but it is also a laster that sucks. Not so great. More patchouli and less cedar would make this a winner, but as it's mixed now there seems to be just enough patchouli to make the cedar smell dirty instead of sweet, which unfortunately makes it clash with the apricot. Lobster Rating Better than: pinchy shoes

...nobody's mentioned Wrath? Wrath has enough cinnamon and black pepper and other hot stuff to knock your backside right off.

I think Snowfox might be my nose-twin. Seconding her votes for Dragon's Claw and Kathmandu! D'sC in particular is almost pure sandalwood on me, dry and faintly sweet and gorgeous. Most people get more dragon's blood from it but for whatever reason I don't. Give it a whirl!

And there's Death Cap! Death Cap is definitely dirt, with a little vanilla/mint thing going on. But mostly moist black dirt. I heart it so!

Woo. Normally I'm leery of black musk and rose, but in Sed they work. At first it's nothing but the usual thing black musk does on my skin, which is rancid armpits. That sucks, but it mellows out after about five minutes and the honey and patchouli and myrrh slink out and blend into a thick hot swath of PURE SEX. The rose and geranium are there, but very faint; enough to make it a womanly perfume instead of an earthy honey blend. Man. This is a seriously erotic scent. Hot and nasty. What a treat! Lobster Rating Better than: leopard-print undies

O and Bengal have both come with me to martial arts and stayed for the whole class and the drive home. The amber and honey notes seem to be really durable.

Devilish temptation, as sweet as sin: blood orange, neroli, and raspberry. In the bottle: sharp orange, cherry, and raspberry, just like the description says. Very candy-like. Kinda makes me think of opening a package of Starbursts. On skin: Lollipops. Unmistakably fruit lollipops, with that rock-sugar sweetness. Same fruit notes, but none of them smell like actual fruit--these are Artificial Colors and Flavors. On skin, a little later: Lollipops are still stuck all over me, and there's a Barbie plastic thing going on that I don't like at all. I smell like cheap candy and dime-machine novelties. I have become a Strawberry Shortcake doll! Make it all end! Lobster Rating Better than: marshmallow circus peanuts

Ooh, that's handy! One of my faves is Poison (Hypnotic), and it turns out to be... "an amber, wood, musk fragrance with a fusion of four vibrant harmonies.First, bitter almond contributes a frisson of delight and danger, underscored by the intoxicating freshness of caraway. Then there's jasmine sambac, a highly feminine scent. Third, comes the smoky tones of moss combined with jacaranda wood. Finally, warm, voluptuous vanilla blends with the depth and sexiness of musk, for a sensual drydown." Wordy and probably straight off the box, but good to know! Clearly I'm one of the teeming honey-amber-vanilla throng with pretentions at sophistication!

Seconding the Montresor thing--it is so very, very blackcurranty. Blackcurrant candy in particular. I've seen some bottles up for swap.

Creamy, resinous vanilla, straight from bottle to drydown. Might be amber, might be benzoin, hard to tell. A little cedar. No morph at all, as far as I can tell, and that's FAWKING MARVELOUS. And it lasts for hours. If there's any lemon, lemongrass, anything tart at all in here, I can't find it. Nothing but righteous resiny vanilla, forever. Got it as a frimp and it's going straight onto the "WILL BATHE IN" list. Wish the Lab still had 10mls, I'd get two or three of them for Van Van. It's that good. Lobster Rating Better than: baby chickens

Bengal's sweetness is very honey-like. And oooh, it is spicy sex.

Oh HOT damn. Dirt dirt dirt DIRTY DIRTY DIRT! WOOO! I loves me some Death Cap. There's no dirtier dirt scent, ever, and it's touched with just a little hint of sweetness to keep it from smelling too much like a compost heap. This is loam, man--gorgeous black fertile earth. It's moist, too. I can't tell if the faint sweetness is vanilla, mint, or both, but it's so subtle it hardly matters what particular note it is. Stays pretty true from first slather to dry-down, which I like very much. There's a green note that's a little less prominent as time goes on but the OMG DIRT stays just the way it is. I smile! Lobster Rating Better than: new combat boots

Bengal and Kathmandu, for totally different reasons. Bengal is warm spicy honey-cola. There is NOTHING so fine as a bit of Bengal on your neck before you go out dancing. Smells like a spice market would smell if sex was one of the spices. Kathmandu is gorgeous too, very complex. It's otherworldly, not sweet at all, and nothing else smells anything like it.. A nice bracing change from sweet and foody.

Patchouli bomb! It's almost pure patchouli, I swear. Might be some sandalwood and cedar in there, but mostly it's the All-Patchouli Channel and my god it's awesome. It's THE definitive 'filthy hippie' smell without, you know, all the filth. Just pure earthy sex. It lasts for a good few hours and doesn't morph much at all. Haven't noticed any yogic, mystical, or physiological responses to it, but I surely do enjoy smelling it and that surely counts for something. Lobster Rating Better than: putting your face in warm laundry

Just thought I'd mention: wearing anything with a banana note is bad if you want to avoid bees. I don't think mosquitoes or flies would give two damns about it, other than 'woo, fruit!', but since we're talking blended oils here, it's possible a banana could get thrown into something that otherwise works. The chemicals responsible for a banana's scent are almost identical to bee 'attack' pheromone. It's most pronounced in honeybees but hornets, yellowjackets, and even those bastard wasps will sit up and take notice. THE BANANA IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. SO SPEAKS THE LOBSTER.

The Coiled Serpent. It's an earthy patchouli bomb, I love it dearly.

Huh. So the Power of gunpowder and maleness smells exactly like Hawaiian Punch? Don't get me wrong. After reading the list of notes I wasn't expecting a traditional perfumer's male scent, but I sure wasn't expecting Hawaiian Punch. It's gone in about ten minutes too. Not the man I was hoping for, obviously. Lobster Rating Better than: getting stood up

Initial scent bomb: Wooooo coconut woooooo fig. I can't tell what else is going on because the coconut and the fig are having a cage match right now. I'll give it a few minutes. Dry on skin: Oh, hot damn. This is awesome! The coconut has fallen to the back and the fig is still waving itself around. There is a woody-green thing going on which keeps it from being too sweet or candylike. Later: Everything has mellowed into something that smells like sun-warmed figs on a tree. The greenness has gotten woody and there's a nice tinge of honey. It's vaguely reminiscent of pipe tobacco, but not cherry pipe tobacco. I definitely dig it. Probably more of an autumn smell than one for summer, but I have a feeling this scent will age well. Lobster Rating Better than: finding a free parking space downtown