DiesMali

In the bottle: Salty opium. 

Wet on my skin: Salty, plummy opium. 

Dry: Aquatics are a bit of a gamble on my skin, but this one is quite nice! It goes on as salty opium that quickly sweetens with that dark plum note, and the labdanum and indigo benzoin seem to be combining with the salt to bring it that dark, cold, oceanic feel. Definitely ocean, not a lake or river. That salty opium-plum combination is just beautiful, though, and is definitely the standout of this scent. It's not overly briny or fruity, and the labdanum and benzoin are a cool breeze atop the deep, dark water. This is a fairly unisex blend. For me, between the inspiration and scent, it is calling up mental imagery of friendly but slightly creepy deep-sea merfolk catching the bodies of drowned sailors, and then magically reviving them as newly-minted merfolk. 

In the bottle: Yeasty buttery rolls! Fresh from the oven!

Wet on my skin: Savoury, buttery, freshly-baked rolls with anise seed and cardamom sprinkled on top. 

Dry: This is bread. I smell like, well, freshly-baked, buttery Japanese milk bread with spices and just a hint of creamy almond. This is definitely more savoury than sweet, and very foodie/gourmand. I definitely have nothing like this already, but I'm glad I have this, because what foodie wouldn't like to occasionally smell like a bakery? Herby-seedy bakery bread. Yummmmmmm. 

In the bottle: Wet ashtray vetiver! 

Wet on my skin: Wet ashtray vetiver! Luckily, my skin usually tames even the gnarliest vetiver pretty quickly. I'm already smelling a hint of the licorice and woods. 

Dry: There we go! My skin has successfully tamed the wet ashtray monster! This is now a quite dark, masculine-leaning blend, with smooth wood and smoky vetiver up front, softened and sweetened just a bit by opoponax, licorice root, and faintly lemony tea as a whisper in the back edge of the scent. It's a little bit leathery-musky feeling, despite having neither leather nor musk in it, but the combination of a few of these notes (mostly vetiver and tea/wood) can do that on my skin sometimes. It's dark and menacing and masculine, and actually rather sexually suggestive. Fairly close to the skin, not a huge or strong throw, but I bet it'll strengthen a bit as it ages. This is what a darkly charming villain or antihero played by 90s Antonio Banderas, or maybe The Crow, might smell like if you got up close and personal enough to hug them. 

In the bottle: An unusual sweet-musky thing my nose can't quite identify in the bottle. 

Wet on my skin: I can smell that sweet yam! Sweet, chewy yam with an almost dessert-like quality due to the tonka, vanilla, and cinnamon. 

Dry: This is really unusual! Unlike anything else at all in my BPAL collection, but it would be since this is my only yam/sweet potato blend so far. It's actually a bit foodie-dessert like, though not quite into full gourmand territory. Sweet, chewy yam with gentle (not intense) cinnamon, tonka, and vanilla, lightened a bit by an unusual sort of amber, and I think the oakmoss is the herbal thing in the background keeping the whole blend from being a totally gourmand dessert scent. If you've ever had a baked sweet potato with dessert toppings like cinnamon sugar and melted unsalted butter, it smells kinda like that but even sweeter and slightly perfumier. Almost like...OH. I GOT IT. Baked sweet potato casserole with melty marshmallows and cinnamon on top, the kind you find at a Midwestern US Christmas and/or Thanksgiving dinner. If you want to smell like a slightly perfumier than foodie baked sweet potato casserole with melty marshmallows and cinnamon, this is your jam. Or your yam. Yum. 

In the bottle: Spicy but also smooth red musk!

Wet on my skin: Effervescent, smoothly-spicy red musk with hints of wood. 

Dry: This is the first thing I am testing out of the mailbox, and it's already absolutely beautiful! This is a gentle, slightly sweet and very smooth red musk with maybe something slightly floral, like jasmine green tea rather than plain green tea, and the addition of the fire/ashy pine wood, amber embers, and black pepper gives it an effervescent spice that tingles in the nose a little bit. Not really getting any leather, but I think that is contributing to the 'silken' red musk in making this feel so smooth despite the spices. Red musk usually behaves on me, but I feel like maybe this is a red musk blend that others who it doesn't behave on could potentially wear! It's very much a sum of the parts blend, and everything together just smells SO nice. Piney, spicy, silky-smooth red musk and a hint of amber. Nice. NICE. 

On 4/29/2015 at 5:17 PM, DiesMali said:

In the imp: Dry, bitter.

 

Wet on my skin: Still dry and bitter, dusty, and musky. Odd, and somewhat unpleasant.

 

Dry: I think I'm going to need to let this one age for a while, because it's just not working on my skin today. I usually do great things with amber, musks, and orchid, but not right now. It's almost all light, dry musk and dust, with something bitter-green that I think might be the hemlock. Will re-edit in a month or so if it improves!

Re-review, a month shy of 6 years later! No idea on the age of this imp, but I think it's a couple years newer than the one I tried for the 2015 review. My nose and tastes, and skin chemistry, have changed significantly since then.

In the imp: Dry red musk.

Wet on my skin: A mix of the red musk and body musk, dry and herbal with the hemlock, nutmeg, and orchid. Not much labdanum or anything. It's similar to the 2015 at this stage, but much more pleasant than I remember thinking it was back then. 

Dry: Red musk has a tendency to be 'juicier' on me in many blends, but not this one! These musks combine with the amber, hemlock, nutmeg, and orchid to be dry and a little dusty, and the labdanum lends a slightly effervescent quality to the blend. It's light, dry, and slightly spicy on my skin. The dominant notes in this on my skin are nutmeg, body musk, labdanum, and red musk, in that order, and there's a little bit of bitter, papery herbal quality from the hemlock. The tobacco and orchid are just faintly there, lending a little bit of sweetness to an otherwise fairly dry/dusty blend. Overall, this is a fairly light and inoffensive herby musk scent on me, leaning slightly masculine. It is a bit more chewy and sexy if I lean in and sniff the crooks of my arms, and I wish the whole throw was like that!

In the bottle: Dry, slightly boozy cinnamon and a whiff of resin and dry cacao. 

Wet on my skin: Dry, warm, woody cinnamon with slightly lemony frankincense and a hint of dry, slightly powdery cacao. 

Dry: This dries down as an equal partnership between that dry, warm, woody cinnamon and slightly lemony frankincense. The cacao is a secondary player on my skin, adding just a hint of bittersweet, powdery cacao to the back edge of the scent. First part of the inhale = cinnamon-olibanum. Second part, as you're done inhaling and it's already in your nose = cacao appears. I was thinking this might be slightly similar to a couple other beloved LEs I have that involve some/most of those notes, but it's actually not too similar to any of them, and I'm not even mad. I am a huge sucker for good frankincense scents, and that's exactly what I got. My *only* quibble with it is that it's fairly close to the skin and doesn't last terribly long, but I suspect a few months of aging will fix that. 

This was a frottle from the Lab, and I'm so thankful for it because it's beautiful! 

In the bottle: Sticky rose. IDK how it's sticky, it just is. 

Wet on my skin: It starts out as a sticky-sweet rose, with some carnation and dark fruitiness.

Dry: Much the same as it is wet. Lush, darkly fruity/jammy rose-carnation with a hint of sticky sweetness from the honey. Not a terribly complicated blend, but definitely a really nice one for someone who, like me, loves them some rose. This is actually a lot more fruity-floral than I usually go for with my rose, but I'm not even mad. This is beautiful, and I am thankful to have it!

This was a frottle from the Lab! Oh my goodness!

In the bottle: Grassy, herbal greenness. 

Wet on my skin: This smells like a whole herbal apothecary shop. Whooooah. I'm getting hints of notes I strongly suspect to be rosemary or something else minty-piney-camphorous, parsley, rose petals, nutmeg, clove or allspice, and various other green herbs and spices. 

Dry: Herbs and spices, and a bit foresty! This is really, really gorgeous, and unlike pretty much anything else I have tried so far, at least that I can remember. I can for sure pick out some kind of mint, parsley, rose petals, nutmeg, clove, myrrh, and I believe opium. The rest (and there's quite a lot of that) is a medicinal melange of ???? green herbal ???? resins ????? musk ???? pine???? Strange, dark, and a little unsettling, but also quite beautiful on my skin. Definitely evokes Plague Doctor, and/or Bog Witch. Nice. Very nice. Thank you, Lab, for sending me this unexpected treasure! 

In the bottle: Cool, powdery rose and something almost aquatic. 

Wet on my skin: It's strong but gentle, cool, powdery tea rose with some honey, benzoin, and still something a little glassy and aquatic. 

Dry: This scent is gentle, but very present. It's got a pretty good amount of throw, not something you have to really lean in and sniff like some of the "calming" scents tend to be. Rose-tinted honey dust with gently floral mallow and soft violet leaf, with a gentle, shimmery benzoin-frankincense-balsamic resin layered over/around it. I think the balsamic note is from the balm of Gilead, which I'm not otherwise familiar with. Powdery, but not like baby powder. It's a fairly "antique" feeling scent, like a comforting hug from a favourite grandmother. Pink and gold and feathery white, and very pretty. I really like this, and it actually does make me feel a little better, whether from the soothing frankincense or the power of the words attached to it. 

In the bottle: Murphy's Wood Oil Soap and some freshly-oiled oak cabinets. 

Wet on my skin: Freshly oil-soaped and polished oak furniture and a hint of gleaming ...leather? Yep. Something about the tea + blood + cigarette tobacco combines to smell decidedly like gleaming black leather, perhaps as a trick of my nose or because my skin sometimes does that to certain note combinations. 

Dry: This is definitely not what I was expecting, but I don't dislike it at all. It remains mostly the same as it dries, and smells very much like rich, freshly oil-soaped and polished oak chairs with polished black leather cushioning/backing. Clean, rich, and very masculine. This smells Vincent Price and Peter Cushing as they sit across from each other, at their immaculately-polished dining table, and drink black tea while discussing their concerns and curiosities regarding their friend Dr. Frankenstein's reckless new experiment. This is something I'd probably need to wear either to set a specific atmospheric mood or if/when I eventually get the courage to try the vampy drag king thing, but something that will be very useful to have on hand when I do need something just so. I bet this would be great for scenting my car, too, with a drop or two in a cotton ball stuck in my heater vent. 

In the bottle: Golden delicious apples!

Wet on my skin: Golden delicious apples with a little bit of floral honey and a bit of glimmery amber. 

Dry: Sjofn and Brisingamen had a glorious apple-amber-honey baby, and this is it. It's a soft, pale gold scent, with just a bit of extra depth from the oudh, cedar, and saffron that I can tell are in there somewhere, under the beautiful apple-amber-honey top notes. It's so well blended that I can't really pick up a sure whiff of anything under the apple-amber-honey, but it's somehow still there, if that makes sense? This is a lovely, lovely scent. Not actually very foodie, despite apple and honey. This is what you might expect a Swedish forest spirit masquerading as a beautiful, golden-haired maiden to smell like, as she steps out of the edge of the forest, just before sunset in the late days of summer, and offers an apple from her basket to a weary traveler who is still a mile away from the village. No trick, and that juicy golden apple somehow boosts the traveler's spirits as the golden late-evening sunshafts warm their skin. 

In the bottle: Dark, boozy Smut! With a bit of something extra. 

Wet on my skin: Smut, plus some wet pumpkin guts! Smut guts. 

Dry: The combination of Smut and juicy pumpkin guts almost smells like butterscotch or like...buttered pumpkin booze with a hint of spice. Smut in all its musky, boozy glory, plus wet, gooey, canned pumpkin and a bit of cinnamon, or maybe raw pumpkin pie pre-bake. There's just a hint of spice to it as it dries, or maybe that's just the musk/booze? Hard to tell, exactly. Either way, this is indeed filthy, somehow even smuttier than normal Smut. Not something you'd want to wear to take Grandma out for lunch, let's put it that way. Also, it's NICE. I will definitely be getting some good mileage out of this one. >:D

In the bottle: Pumpkin pancake batter!

Wet on my skin: Pumpkin pancake batter! With a bit of powdered sugar. 

Dry: Wet, sweet, goopy pumpkin pancake batter. Specifically batter, not cooked pancakes. With a bit of powdered sugar and cinnamon. Could also double as pumpkin pie, actually. But pumpkin pie with funnel cake crust...and a bit of powdered sugar and cinnamon. YUM. Foodie, gourmand, fairly simple, and delicious. I want pumpkin treats now. 

In the bottle: Cherry cough syrup and/or cherry cordial liqueur. 

Wet on my skin: Same as in the bottle. CHERRY. Slightly chilly and medicinal cherry, actually making my skin feel a little bit icy-hot where I applied it. Not bad, just strange!

Dry: This is a very cherry scent. It's like "I Kissed a Girl" in perfume form, honestly, rather than creepy walls dripping with blood. This scent is wearing cherry Chapstick (there is a slightly waxy feel, like Chapstick) while drinking cherry cordial liqueur, with a tiny hint of something bitterly medicinal just beneath the sticky-sweet cherry surface. Not getting anything like a velvet or wallpaper note, but this is semi-fresh from the mailbox, so I may come back to it later. As it is, this is actually only my second full-bottle cherry scent from BPAL, and it's very, very...cherry. Not a super strong throw on this, but it's nice and youthfully sweet, and a little more "commercial" than a lot of BPAL offerings. This would be quite popular with teenage goths, I feel like. 

Fresh-ish from the mailbox, but want to get a review in! May edit later!

In the bottle: Soft, leathery-woody oudh and incense. 

Wet on my skin: A perfect combination of every listed note, velvety and resinous and smooth. Oh man, this is nice. The burgundy pitch and incense smoke are probably the most forward notes at this stage, but not by much. 

Dry: This is *really* really nice. It's not super strong, but as it just came off the mail truck earlier today, it may strengthen later. As it is, this is a gentle but present scent that is a perfectly blended combination of all the listed notes. Everything is there and accounted for when you pick it apart, but as a whole, it's a dark, deep, velvety smoke and wood/resin forward scent. The vetiver and oud aren't super strong, for those concerned about those notes. The incense smoke, burgundy pitch, and wood are most forward, with the velvety cacao and opoponax under that, and then the oud and vetiver deepen and darken everything. This scent isn't that strong, as I said, but it's definitely dramatic and doleful, and very very nice on my skin. If you like darkly resinous/woody scents and your skin likes vetiver/oud, this is a must-try! I have a feeling this will enter into my common-wear rotation. 

Not long out of the mailbox, but wanted to get at least a starter review in for this!

In the bottle: Light anise and frankincense. 

Wet on my skin: Pale, translucent frankincense and star anise, and something a little bitter emerges as it starts to dry. Wormwood?

Dry: This doesn't really change much as it dries down and wears. It's a pale, shimmery scent like a ghost, but a ghost made of frankincense and star anise, with a hint of bitter wormwood. The bergamot doesn't seem to be much in play as a top note, but there's a very gentle, warmer, citrusy undercurrent helping to carry the cool frank and anise and give it all that pale, ethereal feel. This scent doesn't have a ton of long-distance throw, but it's actually quite present and even strong within ~12 inches of the skin. For those who've tried Three Dayes from 2015, this is a lot like the top notes from that, without the opoponax/vetiver base to darken it. Very unusual, but also pretty and very much a *mood* scent. 

I'm gonna second The Grave-Pig, which is a touch fruity from the fig, but also delightfully earthy-mushroomy. Must-have for patchouli lovers. 

In the bottle: Brown leather and rosin. Nice. 

Wet on my skin: Soft, lovely brown leather with sun-warmed fir and cedar bark, little bit of green from needles. 

Dry: This is really, really nice. Soft, musky-warm dark brown leather, sun-warmed fir and cedar - mostly bark, little bit of needle green, and rosin, which I think is contributing heavily to the "evergreen bark" feel of the fir/cedar. Once it dries fully, it's close to the skin and is a "my skin but better" sort of scent. Soft, warm, comforting, little bit fuzzy. ❤️ 

In the bottle: Gentle, feminine rose. 

Wet on my skin: Pretty, standard clove-tinged rose. This is really reminding me of something else in my collection...

Dry: This doesn't change a whole lot as it dries and wears, so what you smell at first is pretty much what you get! It's probably the "least unusual" of the Liliths I ordered this go-round, but it's very pretty and I like it! It's in the same scent family as Crucifixion and In Time of Plague, and is actually very much a sister scent to the latter. It's a lush, velvety rose-tobacco blend tinged by gentle not-spicy clove. Red rose and tea rose forward, smells "round and red." Very pretty, would be a good scent for a professional award dinner or something, where you want to make an impression and smell great but also need to be traditional enough that the older folks don't side-eye you too much. 

In the bottle: Sticky-sweet, overripe mashed banana. 

Wet on my skin: Sticky-sweet, overripe mashed banana that quickly fades to a perfect, lightly spiced, warm banana bread. 

Dry: Mmmmmmmmmmm, banana bread. If you've ever smelled a really good loaf of freshly-baked banana bread with a little spice to it, you've smelled this. It's perfect. 

In the bottle: Pancakes! More like pancake batter in the bottle.

Wet on my skin: MMmmmmm, pumpkin pancakes. Or pumpkin bread. And just a whiff of coffee. Mmmmm.

Dry: Okay, this is already shaping up to be one of my favourite foodie scents in a while. SO GOOD. It's true-to-life, doughy, warm pumpkin waffles and gingerbread, or spiced pumpkin bread (pumpkin-gingerbread?) with a hint of hot cocoa and black coffee. This smells like an IHOP meal at midnight, on a -10*F winter night, when my dad and I used to stop and have breakfast for dinner after our holiday Chorale concerts, which are now cancelled by COVID indefinitely. When pumpkin pancakes are in season, of course. Heck, it's making me a little sad now...but also really, really hungry. 

Came off the mail truck today, so may revisit later!

In the bottle: That's some THICC patchouli. 

Wet on my skin: THICC, sharp oudh and earthy-woody aged patchouli, with a hint of blood musk. The combination is actually rather leathery on me at this point. 

Dry: This perfume is not for the faint of heart, or of nose. It's also definitely something you should not get if you hate patchouli or oudh. If, like me, you like some stanky dirt patchouli, you're going to like this.  This scent is basically "freshly risen from the grave zombie noblewoman who just had her husband for a midnight snack." Thicc, woody, earthy, leathery patchouli-oudh-blood musk with just a tiny hint of dried fig to keep it from being nothing but blood-spattered soil. It was almost too much even for my skin when wet, and I wear patchouli extremely well (I have at least 64 full bottles with some kind of patchouli in them, if that says anything). The first few minutes were concerning, but it's fine now! Still a very patchouli-oudh-musk scent, not a whole lot of sweetness.

If you like stuff like Zombi, Nosferatu, Graveyard Dirt, and other zombie/ghoul/grave type scents, you'll probably like this. 

Fresh from the mailbox, so may revisit later!

In the bottle: Smells exactly like rich, un-set cheesecake batter in the bottle. Like when you first pour it in the crust, when it's still warm and liquidy. 

Wet on my skin: Less like cheesecake now, definitely custardy-rich flan and vanilla cake batter. 

Dry: Being a massive metalhead myself (I'm listening to my friend play through 3 full Insomnium albums on his guitar and playing along with some songs on my bass as I write this), I had to get this. And I am not disappointed. ❤️ Rich, warm, eggy-sugary-creamy-vanilla cake batter and flan. Fairly simple, but delicious, and smells exactly like what it says it does. Yummmmmm. I don't like to eat white cake that much, but this is delicious to smell. 

Fresh out of the mailbox, may revisit later!

In the bottle: Kind of weird and chemical, probably from the sweet almond and probably from spending all day on the mail truck.

Wet on my skin: It retains that weird chemical smell for a couple of minutes, but thankfully it then fades and allows the warm, sweet honeyed almond to take over.  

Dry: This is mostly a warm, gently honey-sweetened almond with just a hint of spice, and it smells very much like a Middle Eastern almond pastry dessert I had once. Also somewhat baklava-like, as ellocentipede mentioned above. There's a teeny bit of sweetness from the fig, but it's not really identifiable as fig unless you really sniff deep and analyze it. It's a little sticky-sweet, but the scent overall is fairly close to the skin and doesn't have a lot of throw, so it's not at all overpoweringly sticky-sweet. The myrrh and cinnamon are mostly there to warm the scent, and I don't think this is a blend even most cinnamon-sensitive people would have much trouble with. Warm, dessert-foodie honeyed almond pastry with just a hint of spice. Nice.