septima_pica

So I'm a very new BPAL addict. I've only taken home imps of a few oils (fourteen, to be exact), and by the time I was done sniffing at the Lab last month my olfactory bulbs were sufficiently exhausted that I'd given up trying to keep track of the ones I sniffed there. One of those I took home, and one of which I expect I'm going to need a 5ml bottle, is Nosferatu. This is mostly because of the dirt note. It's a gorgeous smell, which I think would be equally awesome in a lot of different combinations. So my question is this: could some of the more experienced sniffers suggest other oils in which the dirt note is prominent? Thanks so much!

I think I know what you mean, actually. It seems to me that there are at least two main kinds of BPAL leather notes: there's what I've come to think of as the "stiff black" leather smell, like in Iago, De Sade, and Wanda, and then there's this "soft brown" leather, which I like a lot better. The latter shows up, for me at least, in Shrunken Heads, Hand of Glory, and Whip.

At first this is a really nice woody, resinous scent with a few sweet florals on top -- I'd wear it all the time if it stayed like this. Unfortunately, the orchid takes over and everything becomes a goopy, boring purple floral. Alas. I wish the juniper and rosewood would hang around a little longer.

Right off the bat, I like this better than most metallics. It's got some kind of bitter herb -- black patchouli or vetiver -- in addition to the "metal" note and the gorgeous copal resin just like in Xiuhtecuhtli. Sharp and incensey but also sweet. Also, hella strong. And oddly, the sweetness seems to be coming and going -- when it's there, the scent is quite nice and complex, and when it's not, it smells like cologne. Not sure what to make of that; perhaps it'll stabilize with age. Into the box with you, gallant knight! You can come out once you're ready to make sense. For now you're just confusing me.

Where are you? Where did you go? Come back! You're supposed to have cinnamon! Did I get the wrong blend or something? I seriously smell NO cinnamon at all in this. Just a vague oceanic smell and some kind of greenery or other -- all amounting to something like a men's aquatic cologne on vacation in Hilo. Not bad, but scarcely the País de la Canela! I may have to try swapping for another imp of this to see if it's an error in this batch or something.

It's rather pretty, but the lavender and pear dominate a bit more than I'd like. Definitely going to Kalirren for testing -- probably much more his thing than mine. I do like the thistle note, though, and would love to see more of it in other scents. This one's just a bit too flowery-fruity for my tastes.

Oh maaaan. Hay and herbs drying in the sun, barnyard dust, fireplace ashes, pecans for some reason -- and yes, a distinct smell of cracked grain. Which, I suppose, is what chickens' feet probably smell like. I must confess to never having sniffed them. I like this scent way more than is reasonable. WTF. It's just so...dry and summery and bucolic.

(Released version) One of those classic BPAL "apothecary's cabinet" scents -- a strange sweetness over a mass of dusty herbs. Patchouli root is particularly evident, and gives the blend a slight similarity to Badger. And...yeah, there's a suggestion of weed in there too. Good weed, though, resinous and fragrant, not too skunky. A little iron and ash at the bottom keep it a little dark, which is good. The sweetness is odd, though -- cold, round, blue, high, almost an aquatic sweetness somehow, I can't quite place it but I know I've smelt it before. Gardenia perhaps, or some kind of lily, or...screwpine maybe? I am puzzled. Good stuff though. I seem to be in the minority in liking this better than the weirdly pineappley prototype, but I definitely do.

Powder bomb, waaagh! Serves me right for trying a black musk scent un-aged. I'll try this again in a year and see if it's become palatable.

That's definitely red musk. Absolutely no doubt about it. And contrary to what I was fearing after these other reviews, the balsam is plenty present -- awesome! The leather, oddly enough, is somewhat covered up by the RED MUSK WHOA, even though it should be a primary feature of the blend. And there's something...salty? Not sure; maybe that's just the red musk playing tricks on my nose, which it sometimes does. Dry, spicy, rather animal-smelling. I like everything in here, and I like it together. I think I'll hang onto it for a while, though, and let it blend. The red musk may decide to hold back a little and play nice with a bit more time.

It's like Mary Read took a shower using drugstore soap! Like, Ivory or Dove or something like that. She's a clean pirate now. No thanks. I'll stick with Mary Read herself -- it's got more rum and less Bay Rum. Still, this is pretty nice.

Yep, that's beeswax. No smoke, just sweet wax. Not quite as potent as taking a whiff of a fresh beeswax candle, which is what I was hoping for -- more honey and less pollen than that. Ultimately, not as interesting as I was hoping for. Ah well -- I'm happy with my No. 93 Engine. ::shrugs::

Very sweet plum dominates right away, with just a little lilac and the soft, light-brown leather from Whip and Shrunken Heads. Something here is keeping it from being as teenage-girly as I would expect from the description -- perhaps it's the leather? Somehow I had managed to avoid trying anything with the Lab's plum note until now, and it's surprising me a bit. It's not the sweet-sour little backyard plums that I'm used to picking, or the honey-floral-scented Santa Rosas that you usually see being grown commercially; it's something else with a less sour skin and more of a vanillic scent -- I wonder what kind? Is this what European plums are like, as compared to the Japanese varieties? There's still a tartness to it, unmistakably, but it's got a brown-sugary middle note that I don't ever think I've smelt in a fresh plum. Interesting. Anyhow, Central Valley stone-fruit geekery aside, I rather like this. While I thought about plums, the leather note developed and the lilac died down; plum and leather now dominate. Good stuff, and not nearly so excessively sweet and fruity as I initially feared it would be. Not an instant love, but merits further testing.

Scary in the bottle, but when applied, rather nice. An initial pulse of very smokey (á la Agnes Nutter) vetiver, which subsides quickly, leaving the high notes to dominate. I'd agree with whoever said there's a lemon or lemon balm note in here. The sandalwood is in there somewhere, but gives just a general impression of Chinese-temple ambience; perhaps it's coming off as a fake sandalwood for some reason? Very tea-like, somehow. Weak lapsang souchong with lemon balm in it, outside a temple that uses cheap sandalwood incense. Not a combination I'd think of, but it's not unpleasant. I think I'll stick it in the aging box to try later, though, once the notes have melded a bit more.

Oh man. I love balsam. Sounds like I need to try Ü. Bezoar, No. 93 Engine, Anubis, and Tombstone, and to some extent Dracul, are all good for balsam, in my experience. Especially Bezoar, where it's really the main thing going on in the scent -- the cardamom and wood are just a subtle accent to it. (And I'll try Enyalios and Luperci at WC next weekend -- Seismo spoke highly of the former, and I've been wanting to try the latter -- and post in this thread if I remember.)

I bet Jack and Chimera would play well together, for starters...

Have you tried Perversion, for a rum-tobacco scent?

This is my favourite of the Phoenixes this year. It's got a faint phantom soapiness that comes and goes, but under that is a warm, herbal green resinous scent -- like rolling in a nicely-scented forest undergrowth. Not as dark or sweet as other people seem to be getting. Plum, though? Really? I don't get any of that at all. All the sweetness here comes from tobacco and styrax. And the wild lettuce -- that's bitter lettuce, Lactuca virosa, with the opium-like sap, right? -- is a surprisingly strong scent. Smells much nicer on the pulse points. I'll keep the decant, but ultimately decided against a bottle. It was a tough decision though, and I'll definitely be using up the imp.

Shoggoth (young coconut + lime), Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat (melon + lime), and Whitechapel (lilac + lime) are interesting takes on lime, although not vanilla. The only vanilla one I can think of is Mr. Nancy, which is very much lime sugar cookies.

Goes on with an odd almost melony sweetness, but quickly dries down to expose patchouli and spices. After a while, it's developed into something really nice -- it's dark and bittersweet and spicy, with a great deal of depth. The vanilla, thankfully, behaves itself; I think there's hardly any of it. There's an unidentifiable tart top note; I would guess some kind of sour fruit, but I don't see it in the notes list -- consider me puzzled. The ginger-allspice-clove coalition dominates the middle notes, and the patchouli and myrrh (two of my favourite notes) are their reliably lovely selves. The sour-fruit topnote and the spices manage to evoke holiday associations in a way that's not really there unless you think about it, which is about as much as I want. And it lasts for a really long time -- I tried it on last night and could still smell it after my shower this morning. I really like this, and I think it's going to age exceptionally well too. My favourite of the Yules, I think.

Wow, this was an experience. Keep in mind that I really like civet, most of the time. Fire of Love is a permanent part of my arsenal. But Yule Cat? Wet, it was pleasant amounts of kind-of-feral musk along with a lot of greenery, pine and wet mossa and yummy-smelling bruised leaves (yes, it's actually goosefoot -- never smelt rowan, couldn't pick it out). It was pretty good for the first minute or two of drydown. And then it went through an astonishing progression: Christmas tree with a raccoon in it --> Christmas tree with a wet raccoon in it --> a walk in the woods wearing a wool sweater that has been damp for three days. It stayed at that point for more than an hour -- thoroughly unpleasant but interesting enough that I didn't wash it off. An hour and a half later, it's back to a random foresty smell, fairly nice but still not as good as Black Forest. But it was a hell of a ride.

A sweet aquatic, fruity, slightly sharp. Regrettably, no lichen makes itself known. Not enough going on here to shout down the other things I'm skin-testing, and within the hour it's completely gone. Kalirren's review to follow. He liked it.

Ha. On me, this is very similar to Death of the Gravedigger, which makes sense. Mostly a snow scent, with a touch of minerals and a little resin (juniper maybe?). The moss is barely there. After an hour or so, it's a faint aquatic cologne. From the description I was vaguely hoping for something that would give me the adrenaline rush of a direct hit to the bridge of the nose, but no such luck. Pleasant, but I'll stick with Gravedigger, which is more resinous and dirty. Will update with Kalirren's review, because he tried it and liked it a lot better.

Thanks for making my post for me, Apple! I have indeed found some success with aging stuff to get rid of doom powder. In particular, wearing Dracul fresh is a disaster because the black musk is super-powdery. Aged, though, it's one of my favourites. Unfortunately, this takes a long time to work -- my current bottle of Dracul is about three years old, and I really couldn't wear it at all for the first 1 to 1.5 years. I have another one aging for whenever I run out of the first one. Imps, as usual, age a bit faster -- six months to a year to wearable. So my advice is that you might want to decant an imp from your bottle of Black Temple Burlesque Troupe and try it intermittently over the next year. If it does the same thing as Dracul on me, the powdery black-musk disaster will last less and less time and eventually vanish entirely, turning into a sort of dark fuzzy background note that doesn't obscure everything else.

FWIW, mint notes tend to get a bit weaker with age.