doomsday_disco

Wildflower and Sweet Amber.

Tomato Leaf and Red Pepper.

Pineapple and Red Hot Honey.

Oven-Warm Pizza Crust and Oregano.

Hazelnut Spread and Mini Marshmallows.

Charred Cedarwood and Smoked Black Pepper.

BPAL’s first Hungry Ghost Moon in 2006 was a celebration of the moment when the Gates of Hell burst open and ghosts pour forth from the Nine Darknesses into the sunlit world. Inspired by Drew Rausch’s artwork, 2025’s incarnation is a bit different: a spectral slice of pizza, dribbling with a cool, herbal ectoplasm. Blobs of white musk, white tomato, a memory of sourdough crusts, white peppercorn, and rivulets of beeswax candles dribbled on cardboard pizza boxes. May we all find the sustenance we need, in this life and in the next.

13 is significant, whether you consider it lucky, unlucky or just plain odd. Many believe it to be unfortunate… …because there were 13 present at the Last Supper. …Loki crashed a party of 12 at Valhalla, which ended in Baldur’s death. …Oinomaos killed 13 of Hippodamia’s suitors before Pelops finally, in his own shady way, defeated the jealous king. …In ancient Rome, Hecate’s witches gathered in groups of 12, the Goddess herself being the 13th in the coven. Concern over the number thirteen echoes back beyond the Christian era. Line 13 was omitted form the Code of Hammurabi. The shivers over Friday the 13th also have some interesting origins: …Christ was allegedly crucified on Friday the 13th. …On Friday, October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrests of Jaques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar, and sixty of his senior knights. …In British custom, hangings were held on Fridays, and there were 13 steps on the gallows leading to the noose. To combat the superstition, Robert Ingersoll and the Thirteen Club held thirteen-men dinners during the 19th Century. Successful? Hardly. The number still invokes trepidation to this day. A recent whimsical little serial killer study showed that the following murderers all have names that total thirteen letters: Theodore Bundy Jeffrey Dahmer Albert De Salvo John Wayne Gacy And, with a little stretch of the imagination, you can also fit “Jack the Ripper” and “Charles Manson” into that equation. More current-era paranoia: modern schoolchildren stop their memorization of the multiplication tables at 12. There were 13 Plutonium slugs in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Apollo 13 wasn’t exactly the most successful space mission. All of these are things that modern triskaidekaphobes point to when justifying their fears. For some, 13 is an extremely fortuitous and auspicious number… …In Jewish tradition, God has 13 Attributes of Mercy. Also, there were 13 tribes of Israel, 13 principles of Jewish faith, and 13 is considered the age of maturity. …The ancient Egyptians believed that there were 12 stages of spiritual achievement in this lifetime, and a 13th beyond death. …The word for thirteen, in Chinese, sounds much like the word which means “must be alive”. Thirteen, whether you love it or loathe it, is a pretty cool number all around. …In some theories of relativity, there are 13 dimensions. …It is a prime number, lucky number, star number, Wilson Prime, and Fibonacci number. …There are 13 Archimedean solids. AND… …There were 13 original colonies when the United States were founded. Says a lot about the US, doesn’t it? Thirteen notes of empowerment and good fortune soaked in bittersweet chocolate: red ginger, cardamom, star anise, cloves, coriander, fennel, black pepper, pink pepper, red chili, sweet aged patchouli, mallow root, ti leaf, and molasses.

Never forget that our classic Snake Oil perfume blend — usually so soft and versatile — is prepared to strike with deadly force. This brickified variation is deeper, earthier, and hissing with rage: vintage patchouli and aged vanilla absolute conspiring with vegetal musks and dark spices to defy the “Three-Article Rule”, tip over a paddy wagon, and make out in the streets.

Aomono sakana gunzei ô-kassen no zu: a chaotic clash of peppers, komatsuna, kabu, and daikon splashed by salt water and kelp with a dash of wasabi. Utagawa Hirokage

Tomato fruit and leaf, a skritch of soil, spicy geranium petals, orange blossom, marigold, and sultry musk. Takahashi Shōtei

This features a sharp, polished black leather note, the sharp orange blossom/neroli-infused vegetal dead leaves accord from the brick, and a cotton note that starts off as a background player, but eventually pushes its way through to become the dominant note in the scent. It's also somewhat sharp and laundry-esque at first, but it eventually does settle into a soft cotton scent. I didn't get a decant of this one, but I was frimped a tester of this with the rest of the brick decants that I ordered, so that's why I was able to try the entire collection. Although this isn't in my wheelhouse (too sharp for me -- I need some sweetness with my leather scents), I'm glad that I got a chance to try it!

Above is my review of the 2013 version, and last night, I deathmatched my friend's bottle of the 2007 release with the 2024 release (that I ordered early on in 2025). The 2007 version is like the 2013 version: like hot cocoa sweetened with brown sugar, accompanied by a little bit of coffee, and some tame cinnamon. It is glorious. The 2024 release is really different from those two, and it's not due to age because I reviewed the 2013 version when it was new. My bottle from the 2024 Yule Collection goes on with a blast of dark coffee. I thought it was coffee beans instead of actual coffee, but I don't know for sure. Anyway, the scent is very strongly coffee during the wet phase of the scent and stays that way for the first few hours of wear, with the hot cocoa, cinnamon, and brown sugar lingering in the background. Those notes end up gaining some strength and become more noticeable by hour number four, but it never ended up smelling as strong or as delicious as the El Dia de los Reyes that I'm used to... it's just not as hot cocoa-y and not as cinnamony or sweet. I think even the atmo that came out in the release is heavier on the hot cocoa than this scent is, but I'll have to retest and review it later this week to be sure. And I'm not saying this is bad or anything, because it's still really nice, but the ratio of notes is just really different. I'm curious to see if it will age into something more akin to the 2007 or 2013 versions, or if this batch is just particularly coffee-heavy. I'm going to tuck my bottle away to age. ETA: The atmo is heavier on the cocoa than the perfume oil, but still has more coffee than the 2007 and 2013 versions. It settles into something similar to the older versions, so I have hope the perfume oil will as well, with time.

Because it’s almost Hanukkah and we still haven’t taken down our Halloween decorations. Sorry, neighbors!

So I get some non-skunky weed at first with the marshmallow and the plastic-y note that is present in some capacity in all of the blow mold scents, but then this immediately becomes a sugared dark musk (but not black musk) dominant scent on me. I believe it is one of the musks found in Smut, but it has been so long since I've smelled that, that I can't be sure. I don't dislike it (even though I don't love Smut), but the plasticy amber note that characterizes this as a blow mold scent keeps me from enjoying this more. I also wish I got more of the rice milk and marshmallow from this. Of the two 4/20-themed Easter scents from this year, Four and Twenty Blackbirds is more of my jam.

Nox adveniet: a somber waft of incense curling through night-blooming jasmine, poisonous berries, opium poppy accord, sugared absinthe, and bergamot blossoms.

I received a tester of this in a decant package and have tried it twice. On me, Death Moon is mostly about the jasmine and the incense. It starts off being more jasmine forward, but the incense cozies up along side it and eventually becomes stronger than the jasmine after a few hours of wear. I get touches of the berries and opium poppy behind those notes, but the bergamot and absinthe don't really stand out on my skin. This one is definitely one for jasmine lovers, especially those who would enjoy it paired with incense.

Alas, poor Marsh! Dribbles of masticated vanilla pods soaked in ethanol and caked with mud.

This goes on as a blast of cool, mentholic mud (which I totally was not expecting, and I've tested this three times now and have had the same result each time -- I'm guessing that's tied to the ethanol note, or this mud is a little frozen?). It doesn't take long for the mud note to soften, and for the vanilla note to emerge and quickly become the dominant note. The vanilla in this reads as a sheer, skin musk-y vanilla to my nose, especially after it has been on the skin for a while. There is only a hint of soft dirt (that's no longer mentholic) in the background by the end of the day. I don't feel the need to upgrade to a bottle of this one, but I'm glad I got to try it.

Golden hay, vanilla bean, toasted amber, hazelnuts, white carnation petals, and cream. Artist - Shibata Zeshin

This is another hit from the Wild Hearses atmo series. It smells like the most delicious fizzy, citrusy, berry-infused drink, and it's unapologetically pink and perfect for summer. Like the other hearse scents, I should have just blind bottled it, but since I went the decant route and this is so good, I will be keeping the decant in addition to the bottle I upgraded the decant to so I can have this scent on the go.

A little nod to my Filipino-Ashkenazi heritage!

Quoting my review from 2015 for this review. Golden Priapus is one of my favorite GCs, and I'm so sad that the current version of it is nowhere near as amazing as the original. I'm not saying that the Lab changed the formula or anything, and it could be a batch variation, but I think they may have had to substitute a different kind of vanilla and/or amber, in the way that the current iteration of Snake Oil doesn't smell the same as the pre-2019 versions to some of us, because they've had to use an aged vanilla absolute and aged patchouli in the scent due to supply issues. (Here's a link to the post I made on the forum with Beth's announcement from Facebook, so someone doesn't think I'm just speculating on the Snake Oil front.) Obviously my bottle from 2015 is ten years old and fabulous, but the oil in my bottle of Golden Priapus from 2015, even when it was new, has always been a pinkish color that goes on that way on the skin, and the oil in this new bottle is clear. I still get the lovely pine note, but that's pretty much all I'm getting from the new bottle -- the vanilla and amber seem to be missing in action, and the scent just smells thinner, for lack of a better description... like it is missing some depth. Perhaps that will change with age, but now I'm worried that Golden Priapus has also been affected by these vanilla supply issues and that it will never smell the same again. I'm also worried about Tombstone, because I believe Golden Priapus and Tombstone may share the same golden vanilla, and while I have gotten a few bottles of Tombstone to stash away to age over the past few years, I haven't actually tried them all to know if they smell different. But I do know that I didn't get Tombstone's vanilla from the Pumpkin Tombstone found in last year's Weenie collection, so now I'm worried about the fate of that scent in addition to Golden Priapus. I deathmatched this new bottle of Golden Priapus with the old one and could still smell the old one when I woke up the next morning, waking me up with the scent of pine, amber, and vanilla goodness. But I didn't smell the new one on my other hand at all. Fingers crossed that this will age into something similar to the Golden Priapus I know and love. If it doesn't, the pine is still lovely, but it isn't the swoon-worthy scent that I fell in love with.

Quoting my review of the 2006 version since I have now tried the 2007 version. All of the aspects of the snow that I described in the above review are still present (sans any chapstick undertone) and the most prominent aspect of the 2007 scent, but I also get the pastry from this batch, as well as a hint of dirt! I wonder if those notes had just aged out of the 2006 scent (it wasn't a decant, but a bottle), or if there were just a difference between the releases? In any case, I definitely prefer the 2007 version and I'm glad I got a chance to try it!

This smells like cologne to me. I'm not able to pick out any distinct notes, but there are surely some metal notes here that are giving off that cologne vibe. The scent has hella staying power and throw, too. It's not something I could see myself reaching for, but it is something that I would enjoy smelling on someone else.