Penance

I had to have this one when I saw it. It screams "me." The only thing missing here is patchouli. This is a gorgeous scent. Dark and purple-black feeling with layers of soft muskiness, resins and warm, darkly fruity honey. It's so perfectly blended that it's nearly impossible to pick out the notes. This kind of scent is what drew me to BPAL in the first place. This reminds me of Panther Moon, a bit, though they don't smell the same. There's a similar feel to them that I'm loving.

I debated on this one a lot before buying. I don't do well with the Lab's pumpkin note(s). They usually smell too buttery to me and make me a little queasy, but the rest sounded good and it was Halloween, so may as well give it a try. I'm glad I did! The pumpkin part is a little bit buttery, but it gives it a warm, cozy sort of note. The pumpkin spice is nice and not overwhelming, the bourbon is definitely there but not "I smell like a bar" level and the orange zest and cinnamon clove just warm it up that much more. This is less boozy than I expected, but also much better than expected! I'm glad I took a chance.

I had the barest chance to try this before I had to scrub it off because of an allergic reaction (uncontrollable sneezing - had to be to the candy apple component since I've tried Smut in many forms and never had a reaction). My impression in that short period of time: green apple Jolly Ranchers. I couldn't wash it off entirely, but what was left was essentially Smut with a little bit of sour green apple. I'm not sure I'm getting the same apple as everyone else? Disclaimer, though: I'm recovering my sense of smell Post-COVID and I did only have a short time to smell it.

Woman as Dragon starts out intense; not seductive, more like suffocating, with a huge waft of red musk based with fiery spices. The ginger isn't lemony, it's got that burn of real ginger root. The peppercorn adds a subtle, unexpected spiciness. I can't smell the dirt or any of the “blood-caked tar.”

Smut + Bit-o-Honey candies, heavy on the Bit-o-Honeys. It's delicious. That is all.

This sounds perfect except for the cardamom. I'm starting to suspect it's the mystery note ruining my enjoyment of several otherwise great scents. But I had to get it, because obviously I did. It had to set until now because I came down with COVID and completely lost my sense of smell before I could even test it, so it's well settled now. Which leads me to... DISCLAIMER: My sense of smell is in no way normal at this point, but it's not distorting notes or adding things that aren't there, it just misses things a lot of the time. Luckily, with BPAL, if I hold it right up against my nose, I can smell it enough to get the gist of it. Now on top the review... When I first sniff this, I get a soft, cooked down, sugary blackcurrant pie filling with a hint of crust, which is very nice. Wet on my skin, it immediately amps up this buttery crust that reminds me of March Hare's pastry note and then after a short while, gives way back into a more balanced, but leaning towards berries, delicious pie scent. I hope I'm not missing the cardamom note of doom thanks to my nasal technical difficulties, because I don't smell it here.

Let me preface this by saying that I lose my sense of smell several weeks ago due to COVID and it's just coming back, so I may be missing things here. I'm doing my best, though! I was nervous about the holy water and olive wood. It turns out I had a good reason to fear them...for maybe 15 minutes, tops, since they give way to the rest of the scent and don't really seem to come back. First on, this is nothing but holy water and olive wood. Not good. But, given a little time, it blossoms into a spicy (its clove, but..different; more dry and ethereal somehow?), softly musky scent with a little touch of incense. My one real complaint (I can get past the "yuck notes" stage) is that this one has such a faint throw and scent. But that could just be my nose. I have a weak sense of smell, so for all I know, it's got throw like a major league pitcher and I just can't tell.

I couldn't imagine this one going wrong since there's nothing I don't like here. And yet, I'm the bottle, it's nice but unremarkable. Wet on me, though? Bitter, acrid, burnt leaves/rubber mixed. This one is a wild ride on me, though. I went from this smells good to "Of, God, get this off me and away from my house!" and then right back to yum! It ends up a dark, slightly deep cocoa-scented dark wood with a want of incense. Sounds weird, but it's dark and lovely. To be honest, I've got several scents that are more or less in the same vein and I'm not sure I need it, but I do like it in the end!

I only have a sniffie of this, so I can't do a skin test, but this is nice! I like to eat mangoes, but didn't think I wanted to smell like one. I may have been wrong. This is sweet - much sweeter than I expected - and smooth and not overly "ripe" smelling. This would make a nice summer perfume on its own or blend well with lots of things.

I've had (and loved) Hellion since it was released, but La Fée Verte never quite appealed to me, although the artwork is lovely. I honestly have absolutely no idea what most of the things in here smell like. Herbs? Flowers? The rest of it I know, obviously - vanilla, musk, honey and spices. All the herbs or flowers are throwing me, but since I unexpectedly came across this, I'm eager to give it a go! In the bottle and wet, this is lemony. Very lemony. I don't know what's responsible for that since there's no lemon listed, but it's almost like lemongrass rather than the fruit. Lemon and some muddled, slightly herbal, slightly sweet background? Odd. The "lemon" disappears as it dries down and it goes through a stage of being all soft herbs and what smells like tiny sprigs of delicate little flowers. The final dry down is unexpected and lovely! For some inexplicable reason, it smells a bit like Antique Lace on me. Sort of a chamomile-like faint herbal backing with faded flowers and soft, musky vanilla. This one was a morpher and unexpected. I'm glad I got to try this after all and I think I'll be keeping mine.

Whiskey, tobacco, and incensed bear musk. I'm looking forward to this one. I like Mad Sweeney, with its super heavy whiskey note, and I love tobacco and most musks. Wet and in the bottle, this is a whoosh of whiskey and basically nothing else. I'd be okay with that if I didn't have Mad Sweeney to do the same thing. Dried, though, this is different. Very different. The whiskey mostly burns off and a musk that's wonderfully soft and cozy comes out. No tobacco (sad face), but it's otherwise wonderful. But then The Powder shows up. I know it's the musk because this has happened more than once with musks like these. Enraged Bunny Musk did the same thing, for example. I'm not sure if this one will stay with me or go at this point.

I unexpectedly laid my hands on a bottle of this and couldn't wait to try it. I thought for sure I would like it. I was wrong. I love it! The patchouli is deep, dark and dirty (like in Owl Moon), the teak is a gorgeous, dark wood, the coffee adds just the slightest hint of depth and then the green cognac and white musk? Can't find them, but I don't care. The other notes were actually what attracted me to this one. The end result is a dark, earthy, deeply woody (not like polished wood; like the smell of a freshly sawn piece of hardwood) with just a bit of coffee depth. Beautiful. I wish I could track down a duplicate.

Oh man, I was worried this was going to sound great but not work on me. I was wrong. This is so beautiful! 🖤 I get predominately amber - soft, golden, gently resinous - over a background of very soft resins and what smells like vanilla. I have no idea where the vanilla is coming from, but this is just so smooth and nice. It's a warm, snuggly scent. This is no scary, spooky cat - it's a soft, fluffy, amber tabby with fluffy toes, who likes to sit on your lap in front of the fire. I was hoping to like this, expecting to be somehow disappointed for reasons unexplainable and ended up loving it so much I'll be getting a backup.

First? Lucky me! I've never tried any of the Dead Leaves scents, so this is a first for me. Right off the bat, I do get a quite realistic dry leaf now, like jumping into a freshly raked pile. As it dries, I get some light sandalwood and an almost non-existent cannabis note that smells the same (but much weaker) as in Pumpkin Doob. This is a really nice, if a little weird, fall scent. I'm going to have to see how it ages.

2008 version I can't remember if I tried the 2005 version. I most likely did, but I can't remember what I thought of it. So here we go again! I was afraid of the "girly perfume" in this since I'm decidedly not girly and hate perfumey scents, but it turns out I had nothing to worry about. This is Mistletoe's younger, sweeter, girlier cousin. It's soft pine, what smells like holly berries and a hint of something very vaguely sweet underneath. I like this!

I really wasn't sure I was going to like this, but the concept of it was lovely, so I gave it a shot and... It's not working for me. I get a very nice clean laundry smell (not laundry detergent or that fake "clean linen" scent you smell in candles and bathroom sprays) that slowly, slowly lets through more and more apple cider until it's probably 85% sweater / 15% apple cider. The cider is really nice and would have made a nice single note. Ultimately, though, this, as it stands, just isn't my style.

I know what the individual components smell like here, but can't imagine quite what it was going to smell like. I just had to have it. 😂 This is by far the strongest cannabis scent I've smelled from the Lab. It's a very fresh, green, sticky weed scent mixed with autumn spices. I also get a little bit of what smells like pumpkin pie filling every now and then, which is interesting. This is exactly what it says on the tin. It's weird, but it's good!

Boy, I did NOT know what to expect from this one since the ingredients are so strange. Well, this one's weird, folks. I think we all expected that, but it's weird. Not unwearable, though, but I'll get to that! This starts off smelling like minerals and sooty powderiness (not baby powder, more like the very fine ash out of a coal bin) in the bottle. As soon as I apply it, I get hit with a huge thwack of turpentine, which, thankfully, passes quite quickly. The scent from there is linear: it settles into what's ultimately a sort of ashy sandalwood with a slight amber base over something I'd read as old paper but is probably canvas. It doesn't really read as "perfume" (as in a scent I'd wear on my body, not a perfumey type scent), but could be awesome for an atmo spray. I think since it reads more masculine, it could potentially be a good scent for a man who doesn't like the run of the mill.

Wet on my skin, this is unbelievably strong, TART, blast you in the face red currant. Like all red currant all the time. And did I mention the tartness? Luckily, as it dries, the currant, while still being very tart, starts to be balanced by a mix of sweet meringue and cream. Yes, cream. Not cream cheese. I really need to slather this one, otherwise it's essentially a HEY, I HEARD YOU LIKE SOUR CURRANTS! single note. In the bottle and dried are fine; very similar, but not quite the same. Wet, though, is a rollercoaster. Still a winner. 🏅

This is one of those scents that has me scratching my head because I smell something in it that's not there, according to the notes. I smell amaretto in this. Light, and backed up dark fruits (a dark cherry with a sort of macerated quality stands out), but amaretto all the same. I'm sure it's some combination of the notes confusing my notes, but here we are. This whole scent reminds me of a cousin to Countess Willie of all things (hear me out, folks; my nose is interpreting this one strangely, apparently.) Willie had her chocolate plum and amaretto and here I'm getting amaretto plus a sort of macerated dark cherry with maybe something almost like faint chocolate, that's probably actually leather? This is lovely (though I hate amaretto), but confusing. I don't smell any of the listed notes at all, unless the "macerated cherry" is blackcurrant (though I don't think so as it's not a new note to me). For what it's worth, I asked my husband what he smelled and he said "sort of a dark cherry thing with something behind it." He agreed that what he smelled was what I was smelling, but our interpretations were just a little different. He said that it was like the "dark cherry thing with something behind it" and "chocolate?" and I said sort of an unexpected macerated dark cherry-amaretto mixed with faint chocolate or maybe some sort of leather. His overall impression was a good one. I'm undecided on this one in spite of multiple tests, so I'm going to sit on it and see what it turns into as it grows up.

Sweet cream, honey dust (almost like Skin Musk, Cream and Honey Dust) and and a very soft herbal-floral lavender. The puppy paws seems to be a soft "fur" musk, like in Ivanushka. I'm not getting the white patchouli here, or maybe I'm not familiar enough to recognize it.

Why did I get this? I hate rose. I hate florals, but roses are especially big offenders. And yet when I saw the other two notes - ether and chloroform! - I had to try. At first PoD is a very fresh rose bouquet, like waking into a florist's shop. Then it transitions very quickly into a slightly more powdery rose with something somewhat sickly sweet that I can almost taste it in the back of my throat (the ether) and a tiny touch of something almost chemical (the chloroform). The anaesthetic notes make me think of an old-fashioned dentist's office. Being in the chair, looking at the apothecary bottles on the shelves. That makes it sound unwearable and weird. Well, it is kind of weird, but not unwearable! I'm thinking I may keep mine, actually, rose-hate be damned.

I was intrigued by the notes in this one, but confused about exactly what it would smell like. Heavy notes mixed with light, airy ones. This is lovely and so well-blended. The description is spot-on, even though I have a hard time identifying exact notes. It's strange. I get airy, light golden resins and Incense, a touch of apple peel (something golden-green), a little musk and the most gentle, subtle bed of cedar and patchouli. Patchouli haters have no fear, though, it's not a big deal.

Strong, extra gingery gingerbread gives way to a softer gingerbread with candy (something fruity, cinnamon red hots and a general mixed candy smell). Dries down into gingerbread, cinnamony, fruity candy and a touch of pretzel.

I so wanted to love this and I really thought that if it didn't work, the downfall was going to be the tuberose. Or maybe even the crystalline musk. But no, I think it was the opium! One of the notes I was most looking forward to! In the bottle, this is very pretty. Dark, smoky, a little mysterious, feminine without being overly so, just a tiny perfumey. But on me? Baby powder. Or, maybe, a tiny, tiny bit like the scented talcum dusting powder my mom kept in our bathroom when I was a kid (for use on fancy occasions). But pretty much just a baby powder single note. Skin chemistry decided this one for me. It's a no-go.