Seven Inches of Blood

[doomsday_disco]

A shimmering pool of coppery red musk, Dracaena cinnabari, clove bud, cacao, and lead.

 

The grave of the Countess Mircalla was opened; and the General and my father recognized each his perfidious and beautiful guest, in the face now disclosed to view. The features, though a hundred and fifty years had passed since her funeral, were tinted with the warmth of life. Her eyes were open; no cadaverous smell exhaled from the coffin. The two medical men, one officially present, the other on the part of the promoter of the inquiry, attested the marvelous fact that there was a faint but appreciable respiration, and a corresponding action of the heart. The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed.

[Assimbya]

This is such a fascinating scent! In the bottle I get pretty much just the lead, very sharp and acrid, almost difficult to inhale; it feels as if it might be some noxious chemical. I felt sort of scared of it, and of the prospect of putting it on my skin.

 

Going on, it's mostly the lead still, though the scent becomes brighter, more metallic and less acrid, with just a hint of spice. As it dries, clove and dragon's blood come forward and are spicy and lovely and dark, with a rounded sweetness from the red musk. The lead becomes a background note, faintly threatening; it fits the image of the leaden coffin filled with blood as an old and solid object containing the other notes. The cacao is quite subtle and I have to work to pick it out - it's very definitely cacao and not chocolate, more spicy-herbal than at all foody. It's a strong scent - I only needed to apply a very small quantity.

 

I'm pretty surprised by how much I like this in its final incarnation, given how the lead freaks me out in the bottle. It paints such an effective scent-picture, and is dark and vampiric and scary without being unwearable. I don't know yet in what contexts I'll wear it, but I am very glad I can.

 

Even though have only tried a few of the Carmilla scents so far, I am really impressed by the thematic coherence of the collection and the way the repetition of the notes tells a story. The way the clove and cacao return in this scent, sort of melted into the red musk and dragon's blood and surrounded by the lead, truly does give a sense of the terrifying reveal of Carmilla's true nature, and the continuity between her unconscious vampiric self and the face she shows to Laura.

[Little Bird]

I wore this today without checking the notes, and I didn't get anything reminding me of lead, perhaps because I wasn't looking for it at all.  7" of Blood is actually very tame, in my opinion.  It didn't shift at all the entire time that I wore it, and it smells like dry wood, clove, and cinnamon.  No cocoa, dragon's blood, or red musk that I can find either.  The red quality that I get from the scent is more from the spice.  It's a warm, powdery, dry, spicy scent.  Not a ton of throw and staying power, even though spices usually amp up on my skin.

[Tungerine]

Smells like artificial banana flavouring in the bottle. VERY odd. It changes completely on my skin though, into an incredible warm and spicy metallic scent. The clove is drowning out the other notes a little but I expect it to mellow with time. This is the blood scent I've been looking for. This is what blood should smell like.

[LavenderCoffee]

more like seven layers of component separation, amirite? I kid, there's maybe only four or five, but give this one plenty of gentle agitation before you apply to get everything.

 

for me the lead note was really rather ominous up front, but after the blend had some time to settle and I tested it a few more times, it became less daunting. the musk is strangely flattened against a gentle dry clove, and overall I find myself in agreement with Tungerine's conclusion: "This is what blood should smell like." it's not a candy fruity blood, it's not a spicy resiny blood, it's just ...blood. or a more realistic approximation via perfume than I've sampled before.

seems like it would be a good one to accent other scents with, if not layer directly, to goth them up a bit.