myth

Leave it to someone who hates it to ID the note in a blend! I can't believe I'm the first person to say it, but this is HONEY. OHAI HONEY, FUNKY DOOM. Sweet, sweaty BO funkiness honey. Also maybe some kind of sugar note because it does have that high sweet hit that I get from Sugar Skull/Velvet Unicorn and the like [without the fruit component]. At first I thought I smelled ginger and musk a la Flesh-Eating Reindeer, but that may be because I read the reviews first and am highly suggestible. On next day/subsequent sniffing I don't smell musk anymore... I think I mistook the honey funk for a dark musk at first... and there's only a slight faint hit of ginger. But mostly my nemesis honey. If there's anything else in here, it's completely smothered by the honey doom ampage happening with my skin chemistry.

To me this immediately smells like what I think of as "hairspray musk." This smells like other perfumer's red musk... Nocturne Alchemy, for instance, has a red musk note that smells very like this, and I find it quite off-putting. BPAL's red musk [the one in the Snakes, Mme Moriarty, Midnight Kiss and the like] is hands-down WONDERFUL on me, and I can tell you this does not have THAT red musk in it. It may be some other type... but actually I agree with YBNB that this is Dragon's Blood. Before I came and read the reviews I was encapsulating it as hairspray/soapyish/incense, but as soon as I saw mention of DB I thought "thats it." And this may be, I think, the floral element other reviewers are picking up... BPAL's Dragon's Blood on me is sour-floral-resin [here, conversely, Nocturne Alchemy's Dragon's Blood is entirely different and wonderfully incensy with no floral element; so odd how things vary from maker to maker]. At any rate, Set v3 is not my friend. Sour hairspray + cloying floral = unpleasant. Beth is right to have shelved this one.

Holy cloying floral Batman! I smell soap and flowers. Smells like a high end but somewhat stuffy and traditional bath shop. This was about a half and half split between love notes and doom notes, and guess which are winning. I got no plum. No red musk. There's a dark and smoky base that is probably a roll up of the opoponax, tobacco and patch, but this doesn't strike me as a resinous blend and I don't smell any of those distinctly, or the amber, or any of the stuff I was hoping for from this. On my skin it smells nothing like Snake Charmer... not even in the same family. It's a heavy floral soap on full dry-down. If you amp florals like I do this one will probably make you sad. It gave me a headache.

In vial and wet, a laffy taffy candy-like banana and a faint hint of pie crust. Metallic note comes out underneath as it dries. Ends up kind of non-descript in dry-down... a vaguely fake-banana creaminess is left, and a slight metallic tinge. This one doesn't really do anything for me.

At first it's a double hit of musk... on the one hand kind of foresty smelling, on the other soapy green. As it dries to heads on over fully into the soapy musk territory. The white/pale/green musks do not work with my chemistry, and this is no exception.

Something here is kind of boozy, and reminds me of Velvet Clown. Also I get a syrupy chocolate [chocolate syrup indeed] and corn syrup, yep. Sickening from the vial... the radioactive waste is in there stinking things up... it smells familiar but I can't place it. It's a sort of noxious green undertone that by itself would probably go soapy on me. On skin that green ozoney note mostly disappears, but it's still boozy syrupy and kind of nasty, like what you might smell if you got drunk, ate a lot of chocolate cake, and then puked it all up. For that it reminds me of my test of the will call bottle of The Feast for the Greatly Revered Ones, because that was corn syrupy puke sickening in pretty much the exact same way. I don't smell any peanut butter in here. Chocolate syrup and corn syrup, and booze, and to my nose it's pretty gross.

CCCXCIX Quick sniff: floral and fruit? On skin: pineapple, is that you? As it dries this begins to go floral, and the fruit fades. The SO is soft underneath. This floral has a creamy tone. Previously reviewed by naeelah. CCCXXIV Quick sniff: I think I smell berry. Unfortunately I accidentally closed my spreadsheet without saving and lost my previous review. This one was weird though, and I never did figure out what I was smelling. It was kind of fruity-perfumey, tried to be evergreen for a while, and had a bit of funk. Who knows. Very little to no SO in here though. There was something familiar about this... Poton Meter maybe? It had a dry fruit/wine/berry component.... possibly pomegranite.... something kind of bright and slightly sharp. I didn't really care for this... it wasn't terrible, but it was weird and not my thing. Last reviewed by Ondine. CCXXIII Quick sniff: I think my nose broke. Deep and difficult to pinpoint. On skin: still weird. Something funky and almost fruity. Making me think of booze and vitamins as it is drying. Very weird. It's possible that the funk in here is honey, I guess. Sort of Gluwein + SO? Second try: this is almost syrupy smelling. What is this? It's still odd... very thick-smelling, a little sweet and a little sour. As it dries more the funk ramps up. Makes me think of garden centers. And I don't know what. So very very weird. CXCIX Quick sniff: Definitely some floral in this one. On skin: strong SO, and something powdery. Thick grandma powder. The SO drops off abruptly once it sinks in and the powder takes over. Definitely some type of floral in here. Once fully dry it becomes more well-blended, and in the throw I can smell both SO and a floral of some kind, and it's actually not horrible. If I sniff right up close I can smell the powder, but from a distance it is tolerable, although not something I'd wear. *florals and honey hate me, so take these reviews with that grain of salt

CXLIV Very like Eanach Dhúin was on me... soap/dryer sheet smell. I guess this is an aquatic of some kind, and I don't do well with those type of notes. I don't smell Penitence. Very clean, if you like that sort of thing... if you liked Eanach Dhúin you'd like this. Previously reviewed by naeelah.

In the interest of destashing, as well as updating my collection to reflect changing tastes, I've been retesting my way through my GC imp box, putting some things in the swap box and elevating others to bottle-needed status. Eat Me just made bottle-needed status. A while back at SEWC someone testing Milk Chocolate Buttercream said "Ooh, it smells like incensey cake!" Well that got my attention and I rushed to test it, only to discover that on *my* skin it smelled like weird buttery plastic. Eat Me, however, DOES smell like incensey cake on me. I looove foody scents, but a lot of the cake/vanilla blends just don't work on me... MCB, Underpants, Beaver Moon, Floating Brain... these are just a few of the foody scents that have not been my friend. I have no idea why some work and some don't ['bed does, but not 'pants]. Eat Me is one of those that stays right, it doesn't turn plastic or fake smelling. The currants aren't very fruity, and I think they are what adds that lovely swirl of what my nose reads as "incense" to the cake notes. I'll go way out on a limb and say it almost leans into a tobacco smell on my skin. I LOVE this, and will definitely be looking for a bottle of it. And to think it's been sitting in my imp box the whole time. This has to be one of the first decants I obtained when I got seriously into BPAL.

XCVI [decant from circle] Quick sniff: something deep, maybe another resin? On skin: Hmm, now I think this may be a floral. As it dries more of a heady floral comes out. I don't smell much Penitence. Gah, on full dry has gone soapy ick. Bleh. No Penitence, just soap, which means some floral something.

I completely agree with the man-scent review above me. This is a hott dude. I like this spray a lot [although Yet to Come is my fave]. It is woody, a touch of resin, the barest hint of leather. Manly. But not too sophisticated; it's manly and rugged, I think. Manly Man is a little rough around the edges, and he's not afraid to do a hard day's work. Less a man in a library than a man who keeps horses. But doesn't smell like them. Ok maybe just a little like the saddle and boot leather. I am very pleased with this one and will happily use up the bottle I have of it.

While writing my review for Thousand Pillar I realized I'd never written reviews for these Inquisition sprays, and that is just wrong because I love them so. Yet to Come is my atmo crack. I LOVELOVELOVE the smell of this one. It is Midnight Mass in spray form. Beautiful resins, with just a touch of added sweetness, and spice from the clove. But mostly the woody resin of frank and myrrh. If you think this sounds like it will smell good you are right, because it is exactly what you would expect from these notes; it does not disappoint in any way. Gorgeous. I have two full-size bottles and at least one 1oz decant [maybe two of those] and I can only hope that will be enough because this is the one I always reach for. Thank you Lab for making things for weird people like me to spray in my house that smell like resinous sex and not like flowers or dryer sheets.

YBNB was kind enough to swap me a squirt's worth of this, and I was really struggling to write a review because even though I'd squirted away almost the entire thing I couldn't really smell much of anything. So I was thinking this one must be kind of faint on the scent or something... I got a little bit of an incensy scent that wasn't lingering like the atmos usually do. I was lucky enough to find one of the full-sized bottles on someone's sales page and bought that literally the day before my squirt showed up. So then when the squirt wasn't working very well I was wondering if buying a bottle had been the wise idea. Ok turns out it was. The bottle showed up today and I immediately whooshed a spray of it directly into the ceiling fan in my office [my favorite method of dispersal]. Holy cats this stuff is STRONG! [i think me not smelling it from the squirt was a combination of small quantity released + poor diffusion issue.] Very incensey, and I agree with YBNB's suggestion that this is a khyphi blend, because it has that slightly herby undertone that khyphi has. I do not completely agree with her that this is better than Goblin of Yuletide Yet to Come, because that atmo is totally my crack, but this is a really really close second for me [until I ever get my hands on the Jonathan's atmo, that is ] I find Yet to Come more woody/resin incense [to me it smells more like Midnight Mass] while is is very much classic incense, only without actual smoke... I have a couple of Nocturne Alchemy Meditation blends that this smells a lot like. Quite lovely, and I would definitely buy more when I run out if it were available. [Dooo eet!]

MLV (1055) [previous reviews] A juicy bite of something green and spicy, raw green wood, something creamy. DCCCLXXII (872) Definitely some wood, but there is a bright aspect to it that adds a cologne effect. Wood and musk perhaps? Masculine but not darkly so, this is sort of an outdoors/athletic masculine. The musk is unfortunately doing that soap thing that some musks like to do on me, so this one isn't for me. Previously reviewed by Deana. MCCXXXII Plastic baby doll heads? I have no idea what I'm smelling. It's clean, light, maybe with some vanilla, there's a touch of a creamy aspect. Perhaps some kind of pungent herb or spice, because there's a high bright and slightly bitter tone to it that I cannot place. This one is bizarre.

Each bottle of Chaos Theory is truly unique, a fragrant fractal, and exercise in the joy of chance and uncertainty! Each is a one-of-a-kind, utterly random combination of scents, the composition of which is based on whim, mood and gut instinct. CCCI (301) [previous review] Def get the chocolate and bourbon vanilla the other reviewer smelled. Also smells like CCXCII. Sort of like Tootsie Rolls. There's more of a cookie smell in it. Milk chocolate and cookie. CCCXVI (316) [previous review] At first this is fruity, and reminds me strongly of something that I just can't place. Sadly as it begins to dry I detect a soapiness. On second try, that could be some sort of nut maybe. Third try: maybe there's boozy in here. Kind of boozy fruitcake smell. As it dries there is some floral, tropical perhaps, something like vanilla flower maybe. On dry it is gingery with a slight boozy-buttery aspect and a creamy floral. CCCXVIII (318) [previous reviews] [Person I got it from said: "strong! spicy, cloves? something astringent, too. definitely astringent/antiseptic/herbal, almost ... witch hazely? i don't even know what that smells like but that's what comes to mind. harsh, sharp, sort of menthol cinnamon? starts to smell better in the air, definitely some cinnamon and other spices: DARK. In vial, smells like maybe burnt clove, something medicinal; reminds me of one of those smoky Salons. On: hot, smoky, scorched, spicy. Maybe incense or something resinous, but I don't wear much of those so I'm bad at picking them out. Cinnamon - maybe cinnamon bark? - definitely clove, but the bitter or smoked or scorched kind, not the sweet kind, and heat; it's actually kind of sexy in a sweating-in-high-summer kind of way. Definitely smoky. A pass for me; it tickles my throat a bit. Rather like clove cigarettes, really. Dark clove and smoke."] Industrial smoke and ozone. Could be a Steamworks scent… it's dark and smoky with maybe a tinge of lubricating oil. As it dries the smoke pulls back and a little wood comes into the mix… and something just barely salty, like skin musk or sweat.. A masculine cologne-type scent. CCXCII (292) [previous review] Chocolate definitely, dark boozy chocolate. This also smells like CCCI. I think this has wood also though. Maybe. Possibly booze. Boozy Tootsie Rolls. I also think I smell buttercream. CCXLI (241) [previous reviews] [Person I got it from said: "In vial, first time: More weird creamy note. What IS that? It's sort of like cake batter, I swear. But then on the pipette, it smells like weird, sorta floral cake mix, another herbal note, just all around strange! Be interesting to see how it is on skin. Lemon-lavender batter? Second time, in vial: Still yellow cake and ... other stuff, with a hint of what I could swear is white pepper. On: Even more lemon cake-y than the other one I thought was lemon cake-y, but it still does give off an herbal aura that I do think is lavender. The herbals start to swirl up as it settles. Flirtatious suggestions of chocolate and pepper, still. God, I suck; someone's going to pin this right down, I know it. But to me it's sweet, a bit cake-y, herbal, hint of spice. Definitely a chocolate hint as it dries, I think. If there's anything floral left, it's very faint and hiding. (I could still smell this, faintly, the next morning, as a vanilla-tinged sweetness.)"] The weird chocolate/Tootsie Roll note from a couple of the others. Only this time with something astringent. Bourbon vanilla? I don't know but this one is kind of odd on me and almost sickening. CCXLII (242) [previous review] [Person I got it from said: "This is SO WEIRD. S'mores, bug spray, hint of orange? Black pepper and cocoa? J says tootsie rolls. Also kind of chocolate cake, the more i sniff it. Testing: Something foody and something that definitely reminds me of black pepper; there's a nose-tickling note in there. Weirdly spiced Tootsie Rolls. I cannot get any more specific than that! It's impossible! It reminds me of the very edges of a cake when you just pull it from the oven and it's been in just a tiny bit too long - a suggestion of singed, baked chocolate and batter. Cake impression gets stronger as I wear it. Appealing in its oddness, but I'm not totally in love. Is there something raisiny about this, or am I totally nuts?"] Pretty similar to CCXLI on me… bug spray Tootsie Roll. Hmph. CMII (902) [Person I got it from said: "Crisp-clean lemonade and an undercurrent of vanilla icing. Kind of reminds me, also, of those iced-tea/lemonade blends. Actually I might amend the initial description to iced tea and frosting, or lemon poppyseed cakes with sugar glaze. Seriously. This smells amazing in the bottle. And - can it be? - even better as soon as it hits my skin. Frosted lemon cake, for the most part. Those yellow bundt cakes I used to buy from the cafe down the street in the summer of 1997. The iced tea suggestion comes back out as it settles in, though, which is nice."] Lemon poppyseed cakes seems about right. Some breezy citrus and a bit of creamy sweetness like an icing glaze. And yeah, something a bit sharp/clean that is almost tea-like [because tea goes badly on me]. Tea and lemon poppyseed cakes with glazed icing.

I knew this was familiar as soon as I smelled it, but it took Midnight Aeval's review for me to place the scent. This is dead-on identical to the L'Autunno bath oil. I would not at all be surprised to know that this is the concentrated fragrance that was added to the bath oil components. I love L'Autunno bath oil so I love this scent, but I'm also happy to know that I can slather from my bath oils bottles to have it. ETA: I have biz4brent to thank for being able to test this... he was awesome enough to out-of-the-blue gift me a couple samples of his protos. Thanks Brent!

MCCCXCII The person I got this bottle from described it as "smoky coffee," and boy is it. I was hoping for the kind of smoke that works on me, but sadly this is the one that doesn't. This is the industrial smoke note that is in Smokestack and Agnes Nutter. It smells a lot like I recall Agnes Nutter smelling, actually... if Agnes were drinking a cup of coffee she'd smell like this. While I can clearly smell the coffee in the bottle, on my skin the smoke amps like crazy and covers it up. That means this one has extreme staying power, of course.

:love!: LOVELOVELOVE. Did I mention I love this? I'm hard pressed to write a useful review for it though, because it doesn't smell like any of the notes to me. Somehow they all roll up into something that is more than the sum of its parts. The chocolate is indeed a dark one... I don't smell any creaminess or milkiness or plastic. But I also don't smell the dark dry cocoa that I got from Gelt. The caramel is not foody. I know that makes no sense. But if I didn't now what was in this blend I'm not sure I could ID the notes, even as simple as they are. I dunno... it's just dark and slightly sweet [Arrival at Sabbath is the best comparison I've seen and I agree with that, it has the sweetness you get from AaS in which the caramel adds sweetness without being sugary or foody] and a bit smoky but not in a "smoke" way. Nothing here seems like I'd expect, but somehow the end result is total love. This is extremely sexy and just a bit understated. It's the perfect marriage of foody + dark + sexy = amazing not-foody deliciousness. I wish I could write a better review that would somehow convey what this scent is really like. If you're at all on the fence about it though you should really try it, because it might not be what you're expecting. And oh yeah, I love it!

This is insanely gorgeous. To me it is Mme Moriarty with a kick; it is that sextastic red musk with a velvety patchouli lining, and a brighter spiced overtone of orange and nutmeg. It is a sexy scent that is deep red with golden-purple edges. I don't even have a tub for bathing, ours is just a shower, but I'd already discovered the bath oils are fabulous rubbed into the skin while still damp after showering, so that is what I do with this. The scent stays on your towel when you dry off and makes it and the bathroom smell good. I don't find it super-moisturizing even rubbing it directly in as I do, so it is not too heavy for year-round use, but I do need to apply a moisturizer afterward in the cold dry months because my skin is parchment. I use Villainess Ennui [unscented so it doesn't compete] Whipped for this purpose and it works great while still letting me smell the bath oil scent. And if you like Mme you definitely want to smell this. It is GUH. I definitely see myself using this up and getting more.

Mmmm coffeeeee. There is no universe in which there can be enough GOOD coffee scents for me. I love them. And often they are all cluttered up with syrupy booze notes that make them too candy-sweet and fakeish smelling. But coffee as a note is a guarantee that I will seek out a scent to try... I'm one of the few lucky ones who bought *not one but two* bottles of Pinched directly from the lab while it was available, just because it had coffee and I didn't really care what else was in it [although really there is almost not another scent out there with a better combination of notes for me than Pinched, but I'm not reviewing that here so I'll stop talking about it now. ] So when Eggnog Latte showed up at wc I was having paroxysms of anguish over how I might be able to get even enough for a test. And instead I got so amazingly lucky to swap for a bottle of it. It is good. Really good. Uncapping it and sniffing from the bottle it's a blast of coffee, exactly how I love it. Perfect. Upon application it shifts to bring in more of the eggnog, and becomes creamier. The coffee > eggnog morph takes place steadily over the wear-length, which is distressingly short on my skin. I don't get much spice, and thankfully I don't get either the weird plastic of the first Eggnog release or the bizarre perfumeyness of the second 2007 Eggnog, which I feared might pollute my coffee joy. This one stays true and creamy, thank god. Because honestly I don't care about Eggnog. It's alllll about the coffee. If you love coffee this is a good one. If you just love Eggnog and not so much coffee, probably not. It's more coffee than eggnog, the eggnog really just makes it creamy. I am quite fond of this one and will be hoarding my bottle gratefully.

Oh freaking hell man. Just kill me now. I was fortunate enough to swap for a decant of this, and now I kinda wish I hadn't because based on the reviews I thought it sounded interesting, but like something I'd probably not end up enjoying. WRONG. DEAD WRONG. Oh so sadly and completely ever so wrong. This is gorgeous. Fantastic. Amazing. I love it and wish I had more. I get the fruit that everyone is talking about, yet somehow I don't "feel" this scent as foody or cidery in the same way that I do, say, Fearful Pleasure, which is definitely cidery. It kept making me think of Voodoo Queen, but when I comparison sniffed VQ that wasn't quite right. Then I sniffed Hellion, and Trick #1, because I was certain I had something in my box that was similar enough for me to be getting such a strong evocative sent memory from it. I'd say it's in the same family as those scents, but it doesn't smell like any of them. Ho Ho Ho is.... just a little fruity, for me the fruit mostly arrives while wet. Then it dries to this sort of smoky [although without a smoke note, it just smoulders somehow], sort of red-brown-golden feeling, sultrilicious rich complex sexy and completely wearable amazingness. I don't really know what all I'm smelling... fruit, spices, some red musk I think. I have no clue, and I know that makes this an extremely unhelpful review. Sooo, you should probably just not worry about trying it, and if you accidentally find any you should send it on to me for proper care and disposal.

The other night I was contemplating [but decided against! ] swapping a decant of Lump of Coal that I have, so I tested it to see if I wanted to, because it had been AGES since I'd tried it. OMG. The chocolate note in LoC is a dead ringer for the chocolate in Gelt. LoC is oddly perfumey at a sniff from the imp, but it turns to rich dark gooey chocolate brownie batter on my skin after a while. Gelt smells like rich dark chocolate brownie batter at a straight sniff and on skin. I LOVE amber, but really don't get much of it here. It could be adding a tinge of richness, but overall Gelt is very chocolatey cocoa, dark and a bit dry. So if you've never tried LoC or you don't have as much of it as you want, give Gelt a whirl. If you don't do well with amber it may not perform the same, but for me anyway the chocolates are pretty much identical in the two scents. I think I even like Gelt a bit better, which is good since I only have a decant of LoC and I can still get a bottle of Gelt.

OMG THIS IS CRACK. No seriously. I'm not even sure why I got a decant of this, because I'd tried a previous incarnation and found it fake-plastic-vanilla unpleasantness. But, knowing that things sometimes change from year to year, and also knowing a lot can happen to a decant over time, I got a fresh decant from the circle I joined. SO glad I did. I said crack already, didn't I? This is heady vanilla and spice in cookie dough. NOM NOM NOM. It reminds me very much of the Villainess Decadence Smooch I have, only I think this is even more buttery and diabetic-coma-inducing. And dear god I love it so. This is the kind of scent I wear for myself, when I need a comfort scent to lift my mood.

I have a bottle of a previous year of this [can't recall which] but I might need this year's as well, especially since the husband has finally capitulated and begun allowing me to apply scents to him. I would absolutely guess it includes strong frankincense component, there is the rich wood quality that frank has. If you like incense scents you need to try this. I don't mean headshop incense though... this is Three Wise Men incense. It's perfect and gorgeous; simply a classic.

This is mostly cologne. Maybe the faintest whiff of tobacco. I didn't pick up any scorch but I did detect a sheen of motor oil. It's not offensive, but it's not the kind of scent I like. While I do enjoy a masculine scent, not so much with the more "traditional cologne"-smelling ones. IF I did like those I would probably like this though, because it is very smooth and subtle, and usually I find them quite overwhelming and headache inducing.