catalyst

Wow, crazy. It's exactly like a big New England leaf pile. All different colors, but some are wet and some are dry. There's definite greenness here, with some kind of autumn spice, but just a hint, and maybe a bit of smoke and earth. After about an hour the smoke and earth and a little something else is still there. It seems masculine to me. There's some air freshener or candle or something like it out there, because I've smelled something very close to this before. I have no idea where.

I don't understand this. How can something smell carbonated? I don't really get any dragon's blood, and the color of the oil is a medium straw color, no hint of that distinctive salmon color at all. I suppose it could be in there? It does kind of have a hint of the spicy/sweet thing going on a little, but mostly this is ginger ale. I can see why people say cola, though. If I have to pick, I'd say this is the most like ginger ale, complete with carbonation. After about 20 or 30 minutes, it goes into more of a light cologne with a ginger overtone. It lasts for hours and hours. I like it a lot, and I hope I can find a bottle sometime.

It starts out okay, but I get sick of it really fast. It's all mint, lime and eucalyptus, you have to really dig deep for the leather. I have no idea what the other two ingredients are. Overwhelming and not something to wear when you're trying to eat, unless you're eating lime gelatin and mint juleps.

I've noticed that wine disappears pretty fast from anything. My housemate here recommends Wanda, she slathers that stuff and made lotion with it. If I remember right, Tintagel is pretty strong in the wine department. That one reminds me of a medieval Christmas feast.

This is mostly just clove and patchouli, with maybe a little carnation if you know it's there. I don't really like clove or patchouli.

Crap. CRAP! Where am I going to get more of this? I love this even more than Thunder and Blazes, which is leather and cut grass, but this is much more refined and green and doesn't have the wet mud of Thunder and Blazes. Where am I going to get more?! All I have is an imp courtesy of K.Harker, and now I have to make it last forever. It's leather with fresh green over it, there's no other way to describe it. The green is a fantastic, mellow, even greenness that doesn't stick out as sharp like fresh cut grass, or any particular herb, it's just green, like a formal garden with a lawn. Only there's leather in it too. Help!

I had much the same experience as other people here, where it starts off too sharp and kind of funky, but then after about five minutes morphs into something really, really nice. It's complex, dark, and a little sweet but only in a dark fruit way like the "blacked fruit gums" listed. No one note really sticks out to me, it's very harmonious and everything blends well. As time goes on, it turns more powdery and the fruit's more in the front, but it stays unisex and dark and sexy. Keeper.

Straight-up men's cologne or aftershave. Period. Which, unfortunately, is not what I want from BPAL.

This is really interesting. I'm not getting violet much at all, not specifically anyway. It's very dark, complex aquatic. It's an earthy aquatic, if that's possible. I'm definitely getting a dark, thick, chewy fruit, exactly as described in the notes. I'm also getting the tobacco which I think is the earthiest note in here, holding everything down, which is a good thing. You wouldn't think it would work, but it completely does, because it's not tarry or like a cigar at all. There's something kind of vaguely floral in the background, but the dark green notes are much stronger so it doesn't smell "girly" at all. Definite keeper, might even try to find a bottle of this if it's not too expensive. I like it a lot, it's throwing as really sexy on me, I'm being told. Ahem.

Lemon? What? I'm mostly getting cedar, which is a shame, because I really wanted this to be more complex and even-handed with all the notes. Maybe that's the furniture polish sharpness people are getting, the cedar? After the cedar mellows, the musk isn't as buried, and the rest of it is the other notes together as this quiet little whispered conversation over in the corner. It does not last very long at all, maybe an hour, with the musk and cedar hanging around very faintly if you specifically sniff where it was put. So my two wishes for this is that it would last longer, and it wasn't so heavy on the cedar. It's really good, and I'm keeping the imp, but I won't get a bottle mostly because it's gone in an hour no matter how much you put on.

Based on the notes, I thought I'd like this a lot, and it was on my wish list for a long time, even if I was worried about the lilac. Unfortunately... If there was leather in here, which is one of my very favorite notes, I never found it. It's mostly plum juice, lilac, and what I assume is herbs over what could be leather maybe if you use your imagination. This is one blend where all the elements seem to be fighting with each other instead of harmonizing, if that makes sense. They just do not work together as a scent.

I have no idea where people are getting that it's a feminine floral. I get no floral at all. This is one of those perfect examples of why you should always, always skin test these. In the bottle it's just some kind of dark cologne. Not very interesting. On the skin, wet and for the first five minutes, I get strong honey mead. Definitely a dark, sweet, tangy honey all over the place. After about ten, a cinnamon spice suddenly jumps out of it like a naked redhead from one of those giant cakes. The honey is still there, and maybe something creamy? I wonder if dragon's blood is lurking around in here. Not feminine or floral in the least. Dark, sexy, and dripping with spiced honey to be licked off of things later. Definite keeper.

I don't know what I could add that others haven't already said. This is on my short list for my first actual lab purchase, this and The White Rider. I like what most people have had to say. The meaning behind it, the ancient uses for the herbs in it, the final scent being a perfect mix of herbs, frankincense and honey. I didn't know that about spikenard, although I did know about the 36. Herbal, but balanced, not sharp and green, but not dry either. Mature. With that, the olive tries to take it more sharp, the frankincense tries to take it more sweet. This is a perfect description of the 36. Pulled in both directions, but maintaining the balance. This is a holy blend. I wear it with humility and strength, and with a purpose. It should be in a separate section of sacred scents, the way the voodoo ones and the TAL ones are separated out.

I shouldn't have read the reviews, but I couldn't figure out what was in it, and it was bugging me. I immediately picked out dragon's blood as the main note, and something else warm and comforting and fuzzy that I couldn't name or put my finger on. I never got any clove, and I didn't really pay attention to how unisex or not it is, because it's a voodoo blend. Then I read how everybody was picking up jasmine, which I don't like. It contains indole, which is also found in feces, which some people can pick up on, especially men, apparently. I pick it up in stargazer lilies, jasmine, star jasmine and paperwhite narcissus. I didn't smell it before in this blend. Now that I know it's jasmine, I get a slight bit of that musky "poop" note when it's fresh. Well, great. I'll keep it because I never get rid of any voodoo blend, but only for its intended use.

I'm getting the foody-nutty thing too, and strongly. The mint is sort of a cool (as in temperature, not hip) thing that happens up in the back of my nose and sinuses. The other notes are pleasant but just kind of "there." I really, really don't like food scents on me. At all. And whatever is creating this nutty-foody thing is killing it for me. The food part does fade after about fifteen, but so does the rest of it, and the little bit that's left is honestly kind of boring. I've discovered plenty of scents where I'm huffing my arm all afternoon and want to make out with myself. This is not one of them. Oh well.

This starts out as an interesting, dark aquatic, but then goes into a powdery straight-up men's cologne like you'd get from any department store or Avon after about fifteen minutes. Not what I'm looking for, unfortunately.

Oh hell yes. I can't believe more people aren't catching the cedar note. After about ten minutes the cedar calms down, but it's still really up front in a perfect blend with the other woods and the leather. This is one of the most perfectly balanced blends I've come across yet. It's woody but warm. The White Rider is just refined white leather and sandalwood only, and I can detect more of a soft suede leather in this, like moccasins maybe, plus the woods. I don't know if I get the violet leaf at all, but then I don't really know what that smells like. It makes me think of some kind of cedar lodge, like a native or viking building maybe. Very earthy and warm and alive, but without any dirt smell. It seems masculine to me, but then I've learned that a lot of women like scents most would consider masculine. It's definitely not feminine. Once again I've managed to find a limited edition that's hard to get that's made it into my top five. *sigh* The hunt for a bottle at a price I can afford begins...

Very interesting. It's mostly some kind of wood and leather, about half and half, but if that's olive oil, it's the most fruity olive oil on the planet. It pushes things over into feminine unisex, I think, but I might be able to get away with it, I'm not sure. I'll have to get a second opinion, if you know what I mean. The wood is not sandalwood or cedar, I'm positive of that. I'm thinking it's more like oak. It's most similar to the wood in The Antikythera Mechanism, which is teak and oak. The sweetness that keeps wafting by eventually fades so that it ends up as just wood and leather with a hint of something faintly sweet. That works for me.

Apparently the pinnacle of power is a dentist's office. I have no idea why, but that's exactly what it smells like to me. Swap pile.

Wow. Oh my god. Yes. YES. I spotted this on eBay recently along with some imps, and the price was good, so I checked out the reviews here and got some advice from a friend and took a chance. This is the only bottle I've ever purchased where I haven't tried out an imp of it first. I'm so, so glad I did. I've never tried Dorian, so I can't compare the two. Vanilla is usually a death note, but not always, and I don't like jasmine at all. But I couldn't resist the tea note. Plus I like musk a lot, and was curious about the fougere. And I thought well, it's vanilla bean, and not sugared vanilla, and jasmine leaf, so maybe... God, yes. I want to eat and/or have sex with my arm. Maybe at the same time. I dunno yet, the day is still young. Somehow I'm getting smoky leather in this, and a lot of it, which is freaking perfect for me because I'm nuts about leather, and a little hint of smoke in something is nearly always good. If there's floral in this, it's very very faint in the background. The vanilla is not sweet or sugared at all, which was the note that ruined The Antikdfjsdsda Mechanism for me. But this... freaking wow. Obviously masculine, but not overbearing at all. The brighter notes fade as time goes on, of course, and you get mostly soft musk with some fougere, then at the very end it's mostly musk with a hint of vanilla bean, not sweet sugared vanilla. If I had to pick something to compare it to, I guess it would be Havana when wet, but only about half as intense, and maybe Fenris Wolf or Violens when dry? But comparisons are impossible! This may be way up in my top five now. I think I'm in love.

I actually bought this imp as part of a recent order with someone on the forum, because the notes are all things I like, including verbena. Unfortunately, the verbena dominates this to the point that most of the other notes are buried or lost completely. After a couple of hours, it's faded down to where you can actually get a bit of the non-herbal part of the lavender and white sandalwood, which gives a little bit of a powdery effect. Not a feminine or baby powder type of thing, but more like how musk gets sometimes. Still gender neutral, but only barely. It starts off as very sharp, because of both the verbena and the lavender, and stays sharp for most of the duration. The lavender in it is like freshly cut lavender right off the bush, a pungent herbal, not a feminine perfume-type lavender. Johnathan Harker is nice, and I'll use up the imp, but I'm not going to look for a whole bottle.

Out here in the west, there's a plant called "tar weed" that blooms in the late summer, with little yellow daisy-shaped flowers that come about knee high. It's very sticky, and you can see a line on the legs of the cattle and horses that the sticky "tar" has made if there's a lot of it in the fields where they graze. When you drive through the countryside along these pastures, especially on a hot day, you can smell the tar weed and it's pretty distinctive. Here's a photo of it. You can see the little drops of sticky juice on the stems. A lot of people don't like it, but I think it's interesting. What's this got to do with Licwiglunga? It's actually pretty similar in scent to tar weed, but slightly sweeter and more refined. It's a sticky, resinous, woody herbal. The two main notes I get from this are lavender and star anise. Star anise is a seed pod and is much more dark and woody than fennel or leafy green anise, but similar in scent. I like this a lot. I personally think it's more masculine than feminine.

Awww yeah. These are a few of my favorite things. I don't know what's sweet in here, but there is something sweet. It's not a flowery sweet, so it has to be one of the sandalwoods or maybe the light musk? I've smelled some pretty sweet musks. But seriously. Guys. This is way up there on my list. I still love The White Rider more, which is just white leather and sandalwood only, because this is a lot sweeter, and the leather is more of a suede or boot leather than a refined kid glove white leather. It almost reminds me of some brand of sunblock, I can't think of which one.

I think this is more of a werewolf, than a normal wolf, because the two times I tried it were completely different experiences. The first time, I got one of those sharp "cologne" notes that I really dislike. That's the whole reason I gave up trying to buy "normal" cologne, because they all have that sharp sameness. I blamed it on the rosewood, because I know I love all the other notes. At least, I think I do. I don't know what the difference is between normal sandalwood and red sandalwood. I really wish I had access to individual notes, it would save me a lot of time. Anyway, I tried it, thought "eh," and almost put it in the swaps right away. But something "stayed my hand" as a D&D player might say. Something made me give it one more try, because there shouldn't be anything in here I dislike. I tried it today again, after a break of several days, and for some reason that sharpness is mostly gone this time around, and I really like it. So this time it's a keeper. I hope it doesn't go too feral on me again next time!

Yes. I get no green in this at all. I get exactly what the notes describe: Date, tobacco, some kind of root, and leather. Awesome. I wasn't sure about this at first, but the more it goes on, the more it mellows and the leather comes up and tells the tobacco and root to settle down. It's like being in a older gentleman's study with leather chairs and a really impressive humidor. The tobacco in this is the cured unsmoked kind, like a pouch of good pipe tobacco that's been left open nearby. I get no smoke or cigarettes from this. I think I just found my GC replacement for Le Pere Fouettard.