septima_pica

Picked an imp of this up at Will Call last night, on the basis that I've had some really good luck with the Arkham line, and I'm not disappointed. Wet: Immediately a strong vetiver, but not a bitter or unpleasant one. The "tangerine" is a distinctive dried peel smell, there is a faint high weirdness (the saffron, piping?), but mostly this is the Vetiver Show. Dry: Now the other ingredients come out. The whole thing unites into a very nice, if rather weird, dark incense. I'm not sure what "black amber" is, but it seems not to be doing the Very Bad Things that amber usually does on my skin. This is really good stuff! I can see why other reviewers could find it a bit cologney, but on me it's not so predominantly cedar that this is a problem. I also agree with the poster that thought there was something turmeric-like going on in here, that odd dry-bitter-sweet vaguely gingery smell it has. As it dries down, the high notes disappear and the incensey cedar starts to dominate, sweetened by something or other. It's still good. In about three hours it's gone. I didn't put much on, though, so there is hope that it lasts longer than that. Still going strong with the Lovecraft scents...

You should try The Black Tower. That had a strong black musk note on me, backed up with a lot of weird and fascinating stuff.

WRT "Khrysee": HAHA you just stepped into Greek, you're in trouble now! Which is to say: If you want to have the Classical Greek pronunciation, the Y is pronounced as a ü (or like French u). If you want modern Greek, it's pronounced as "ee" (Spanish i). So you have either "Khrü-say" or "Khree-say", where by "say" I mean pronounced as the English word.

OneTheyCallLuna: I had a similar problem with a bottle of Chimera that I bought a while ago. It had absolutely no smell at all, so I sat on it for a few months and when nothing developed I took it back to the lab (where they were very nice --sniff, "Well, that's definitely not it", and POOF, a new bottle from the mysterious backroom stash). Do you know how old your partial bottle is? It could have just been a bad batch from which we both got our bottles...

I'd add Licwiglunga to that list. Behind the pomegranate and herbs, there's a strong papery smell -- not the booky one from Miskatonic University/Aziraphale/The Buggre Alle This Bible, more of a papyrus-paper smell. It's extremely interesting.

Ooooh. I love wood scents. Sri Lanka is the most excellent straight wood scent I've found. Like the inside of an import chest full of silks and incense; the myrrh makes it really smooth, a little sweet, and very well blended. I didn't like Magus or Kathmandu 'cause galangal (though delicious in curry!) is rotten on my skin -- smells like mustard -- but YMMV, as they're good other than that note. From the Salon, Carceri d'Invenzione is another really good one. It's got a bit more of a peppery, piney bite to it, rather than the smoothness of Sri Lanka. Dragon's Bone is better if you can wear dragons'-blood resin, but even on me it's a good one. The blondwood is super-dry but not dusty, almost reminiscent of driftwood. And once I get past the initial blast of sweetness from Miskatonic University, the dusty library scent that follows has some really nice wood notes, like old wood paneling. Dee behaves similarly, although it has tonka for the sweet note rather than coffee and Bailey's, and adds a good bit of a more conventional (though very deep and lovely) cologney scent. I like to wear these two together, to get some synergy going on the "old wood panels in a library" smell. I'll also remark that the teak note that everyone loves in Antikythera Mechanism and Glowing Vulva is the same one as in Pumpkin #5 (2008), in which (crucially for me at least) it appears without vanilla. One of my favourites -- I even bought a backup, which is rare for me. ETA: Mucked up the tags. Fixed.

::Finds imp of Tenochtitlan labeled "2006":: Internal monologue: "Hmm. Interesting. I wonder why I've still got this around, I guess I never managed to swap it. I should try it and see if it's aged into anything interesting. It had, like, tuna-fruit and epazote, right?" ::applies, generously:: "Hmm, sweet and sagey. I wonder what else is in here?" ::reads notes online:: "Oh no...!" Amber is a sneaky bastard. It smells like nothing much at first, just a faint golden resinousness, but then as it reacts with my skin it gradually escalates into rancid sour-milk foulness over the course of about 15 minutes. And indeed, there it goes...aaaaargh...aging won't save you now... ETA: Kalirren's review will be up here soon as well, and may be substantially more positive. Just for the record.

toaster, maybe he should try Dracul? ("Black musk, tobacco, fir, balsam of peru, cumin, bitter clove, crushed mint, and orange blossom.")

Well, that was unexpected... At first, this is an absolute dead ringer for a cologne that one of my former lovers wore for some time. I don't know what it is, but it's a pleasant association, and it smells pretty awesome on me, although a bit bright. There's a tiny bit of a light musk, a little darker than "white musk" a la Whitechapel but not anywhere near red or black. At Kalirren's suggestion I tried adding a little bit of Death Cap to tarnish those metal notes a little, and it was an excellent match. However, an hour and a half after application, the musk and metal notes are dying off a lot. Now what I'm left with is a warm golden balsam note like the one I love so much in Bezoar, and a spicy warmth that I can only assume is the tobacco flower. It's changed characters completely, although unfortunately it's lost a bit of throw too. I don't know what stage I like better, honestly. This, like all the Steamworks scents I've tried, is a well-dressed scent. Not fancy like the Salons, but the sort of thing that would go well if one were wearing sharp business dress. Which I, alas, am not (time to do laundry!). Definitely earning a place in the collection.

I've got a bottle of Dee from early 2006 that has attained the consistency of grade A maple syrup. The imp of Malediction from late 2005, though, has made it to grade B.

I'll second Nemesis, definitely. Nemesis, Nephilim, Medea, and Masabakes are all related scents that fit pretty well what you're looking for, but Nemesis is my favourite of the family.

A whole bunch of funky sharp stuff burns off first, smelling chaotic. After five minutes it's barely perceptible; after another ten there's actually a rather nice, if faint, smell of honey and wine with a bit of peachiness from the osmanthus. Chocolate never shows up to the party, and neither (alas) does the balsam. I've been curious about this one, so I'm glad I tried it, but it didn't work out.

(as Kalirren:) A lot of the perfumes which I like best among the BPAL products are very cohesive scents, and this is no exception. I'm surprised by the number of people who report a quasi-bipolar nature to this perfume. I don't get that at all. septima_pica thinks that it may have something to do with my male skin chemistry? Musk is the most noticeable note and makes up for most of the rather impressive throw. The roses are very well-behaved, and play a very agreeable second and third violin. The amber does the same thing as it does for me in Hymn to Proserpine (another favorite of mine) in that it roots the whole scent and binds it together. I tried this at will call twice as I was going through the GC without remembering what its name was, and every time as I was going back home on the bus, I thought to myself, "if only I knew what this is, I think it starts with an S, because it's awesome"...I got a bottle of it the third time, needless to say.

Are there really two different kinds of leather in the scents? I'll cop to not having tried Brom Bones or De Sade, but Dee, Tombstone, Whip, Shrunken Heads, Severin, Perversion, and Pumpkin II 2008 all have the same kind of leather as far as I can tell -- a soft, brown, well-oiled glove leather. I'm enormously fond of it, obviously, as I own 5 of the above scents and am seeking another, but I can't tell at all the difference between the "black leather" of Whip and the soft tanned leather (ewwww) of Shrunken Heads. In fact, the only difference to me between those two scents is the substitution of the funky green tanning agents in Shrunken Heads for Whip's single big fat red English rose. (On the other hand, I can totally tell the difference between the different roses in the catalog.) Am I missing out on something? Do I need to go sniff some leather jackets before I shoot my mouth off?

I think I would probably think this was really sexy if I were a dragon. It's got this...well...dragon-y smell. The weird musk note, the rather abrasive smoke and cassia, and the sweet resins all combine to make it kind of like what I might imagine a dragon's skin to smell like. Harsh, warm, smoky, but with the musky sweet complexity that skin scents often have. And then there are the fruity-flowery-spicy scents over the top of that, which make it smell like the dragon's wearing perfume. I think it smells exactly like what it's supposed to on me, and I'm completely unsure what I think of it. I'll hang onto it for a while and see if I ever wear it. On Kalirren, unfortunately, it just smelled like icky plastic.

Baneberry is really nice on Kalirren as well. Smells a bit generic on me, but on him it's a lovely complex red-berry and foliage scent.

At first, this is exactly like when you're digging through the dirt and your shovel blade severs a root -- it's the smell of the cut surface, the slightly sharp and spicy smell of unexpectedly exposed root-wood, along with the dirt it's attached to. As it wears on, the sweet myrrh comes out and makes it feel a bit warmer and more lived-in. Extremely wearable, comforting in the way that dirt scents can be. Reminds me of fieldwork in the desert and childhood vacations in the Sierra Nevada and all sorts of lovely memories like that. Lasts a good three or four hours, which, although not stellar, exceeds my wear-length expectation for a dirt scent. (Compare Graveyard Dirt, which is half-gone in twenty minutes and totally gone within an hour, unless you add it to something a bit more fixative-y.) Absolutely wonderful, a great addition to the BPAL dirt scent portfolio. Will probably layer extremely well with a number of things (thinking of trying Black Forest or Anubis, for starters). Damn, I may need a second bottle of this.

For all those who are having problems with totally-unscented bottles: I bought a bottle of Chimera around August and it smelt like nothing at all, so I took it to Will Call and the labbies were very nice about it and gave me a new one. I think there may have just been a few bad bottles, don't know how that happened.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Don't mess around with Fire of Love. It's awesome, I love it to death, but it's a little too good at what it does. I'm not much for magic, but I do believe in the subconscious mind, and I'm telling you that stuff goes straight to the hindbrain.

Pumpkin with black musk, leather accord, tonka, teak, orange wood, and opoponax. Well, I hadn't ever tried a pumpkin scent prior to this Will Call, when I tried all of the LE ones. It's a mild but pervasive note, actually quite reminiscent of real sweet pumpkins -- although cooked, not raw, which threw me off for a moment. It's a baked pumpkin smell, which reads somewhere between sweet hay and burnt butter. Anyhow, Pumpkin II is what I'm wearing right now, and it's lovely. Aside from the cooked pumpkin, there's a good deal of sweetness from the tonka and opoponax (which my nose interprets as myrrh + Peru balsam) and a subtle wood-and-leather overtone. The whole thing just avoids being foody by exactly the right amount -- I'm a big fan. I'm glad I bought a bottle of this, and actually beginning to wonder if I'll need another -- this is a brilliant smell for cold weather. Going up there on my winter scents list alongside Nemesis and Dee. (Hah, all three of those have tonka in them. Hmmm.) This is reminiscent of a slightly less spicy, darker cousin of Bezoar + No. 93 Engine, enough so that I'd almost think that it had beeswax in it. Also, as someone mentions above, rather like Perversion without all the drinkin' and smokin'. Lovely.

I think I got a bum bottle of Chimera in my last order. It's pretty much completely scentless -- a faint smell of powder. I think I'll bring it back at Tuesday's WC and ask what's going on.

Haha. I got my little brother one of these last Christmas -- Brimstone, Mad Hatter, Bliss, Nosferatu, Grog, and a couple of others I can't remember. He liked Brimstone and Bliss best; the first made him smell like a campfire, and the second like a bar of milk chocolate.

Fire of Love. Seriously, I'm not one for voodoo and superstition, but this stuff goes straight to the rat brain. Goes well with everything, especially (for me) honey notes. On the front of sexy perfumes for your boy, sounds like Fascinum might be worth a try.

Yes. Yes, it is. ::wants like mad:: There are a lot of other dirt/rotting-plant-matter scents among the Halloweenies too, so I expect that the dirt-lovers are going to be all over this update. I've been wanting to wear Zombi every other day, just from the anticipation. Deep in Earth was too geranium-heavy for me to smell anything else, unfortunately, and Death of the Gravedigger is lovely but not as dirty as I was hoping. The soil in it seems to be frozen, rather than the wet active decomposing soil in Zombi. ETA: Badger. Everyone needs to try Badger.

Just posting to say: yes, they really do eat only mulberry leaves. I wouldn't be surprised if that influenced the smell. (I don't think I've ever owned a new silk item, so I don't actually know what it smells like.)