Lab Rat

[Lycanthrope]

Eau de Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. The cumulative weight of hundreds of scents -- a cacophony of mythology, fiction, folk magic, and other arcane influences, all clamoring for your attention at once.

Wet... this smells like... chocolate? A waxy kind of chocolate scent? And then maybe the... touch of a cookie-like vanilla. It's surprisingly foody but then also registers as 'weird floral.'

 

On me, the color of the oil is a faint slippery translucent green.

 

As it first dries, I definitely get a mishmash of leafy... chocolate... malt?... This is giving me flashbacks to Chaos Theories of past.
Is that... caramel? No... I ... what.

This is like the equivalent of nose static. I can't identify any one thing, but it just smells... pleasantly everything, but nothing. So it's not super sharp or overbearing.

I keep saying 'wafer?' Like those square wafer cookies you can buy, Manner, I think. I smell crunched up Manner cookies, but like the same slightly neutral powderiness. If you've had those wafers before they're pleasantly bland but not terribly powerful in terms of their flavor.

Oh. Bother. I think I'm getting a hint of... formaldehyde??!?! That can't be right, but it's like the weird mishmash of all smells merging into a vaguely rubbery everything.

Oh GOD, why is it doing THAT.
As a former medical student, how is THIS the smell I'm getting?
Holy cow.

Yikes!

Oh... a little more time and the chemical scent starts going orange/citrus?

Man, I'm so confused.

Starts off foodie, then goes totes chemical, then... fruit rinds?



I can't even.

[Ordo_ad_Chao]

In the bottle, this smells like the box of imps I keep on hand for responding to "BPAL? What's that?", or my first box of oils when I was trying everything and hadn't figure out my notes of love and hate yet. Everything- really truly.

 

I smell a little more like a minty-fruity-green and floral, though.

 

on: it's not unpleasant at all, but really is a mishmash. I don't get anything foody or earthy or dark at all though. it's staying with the red fruit/grapey type and a little herbal and a good dose of soft sweet flowers once dried down.

 

My theory is that I'm noticing those aspects most because those are the things I rarely ever put on my skin, so they are jumping out.

 

It's a crazy chameleon melange of a smell! I suspect this won't be going on my skin much, but I kind of really want to open the door when I get home at night and have this smell meet me.

[voodoocatwoman]

Wet, it is the most wonderful cacophony of scent. It is the proverbial imp box in a bottle. If it stayed like this, I don't think I would ever wear any other perfume. EVER. But it morphs.

 

Sharp herbal. Not so unpleasant that I want to scrub my arm until it bleeds but this is definitely not what I signed up for. Fortunately, again it morphs.

 

Several hours later, it is soft and powdery, a little incense-ish. I do like it but I do not see it as something I would want to wear daily. Maybe for those days when I simply cannot make up my mind as to what to wear. Then it will be perfect. A little bit of everything.

[mystery213]

This is an odd one, that does throw the nose for a bit of a loop- it smells like a mish-mash of an imp box when sniffed in the bottle, but when applied turns into a floral dominant blend with a whiff of a soft green note, and an earthy backdrop. Not quite what I expected, but more pleasant than it probably could have ended up, with all of these notes vying for attention....

[torikitty]

In the bottle: smells mostly like leather

Wet: leather

Drydown: sweet, fruity leather, maybe something green in the back, something spicy or incensey just barely peeking out. Low throw, I really have to get close to examine it. I would not categorize this as smelling like an imp box since mine usually contains really overpowering scents that I dislike.

Dry: leather is fading into the background. A general sense of sweet, powdery, incensey. An earlier description noted that you could wear this when you're feeling like you're not sure what to wear, and I agree. I feel like I have something that smells similar, but I can't place it.

[Spaztic]

Yeah, smells like an imp box. Slightly unfortunately (but expectantly) it doesn't smell just "my" imp box, it contains all the smells including some I'm not a fan of.

It's starts rather sharp and high pitched on me, and this is the phase I like the least. The more it dries down, the more I like it

 

I like it enough to keep my bottle, especially with that artwork and back story, but I had pipe dreams that it would smell more like my imp box

[SimplySyra]

Yeah this is a strange one. I'm having a hard time pinning down scents in the bottle. I find if I roll or gently shake the bottle before sniffing, I will sometimes get different scents. On one cold sniff I smelled chocolate and on another something earthy like vetiver. Given how many oils are in here, it's no surprise that some of them are settling more than others.

 

I don't find it sharp or overbearing as some people have said. On my skin wet it smells very musky and soon after settles into a musky powdery herbal incense scent.

 

A few minutes later there is a definite fresh floral cool scent. Like mint musk and soft florals.

 

It begins to sweeten and every time I smell it, there's something new to pick out: smoke, leather, incense, fruit....it's all there.

 

In the end all I can say is it's a subtle musky slightly sweet scent with hints of incense, herbs, earth, and florals. It all seems to cancel out into a generally warm, pleasant, fuzzy background noise.

[patina]

Fruity? Mostly fruity with some rose and generic floral, something dark and leather and ink like underneath that.

 

It has a medium throw. May just be an illusion, but sniffed close up it smells like a kaleidoscope, as soon as I identify one note it blends into another.

 

On drydown, fruit and incense. But the effect's more like "FRUIT AND INCENSE!!! ...and also something that vaguely tickles my nose."

Edited April 26, 2017 by patina

[lizabelle]

So obviously, this is the kind of scent that's different on absolutely everyone, but I thought it would be fun to track my experience.

 

I expected much darker and heavier, but this starts out light, sparkly, and pretty. I think I can pick out lime, champagne, and ambergris, which make a sharp, citrusy, fizzy combination. It should be its own scent, because I'd wear it all the time. Over time the lime dies out and the champagne/ambergris combo sticks around (seriously, can I have that combo in at least 10 scents? gorgeous), and then something herbal and gin-like comes into the mix. After that the sweetness dies out and is replaced by the ozone-y note the lab does (mixed with that gin), mixed with a buttery bitter almond like in Hecate and some soft herbaceous and woody notes. Finally it settles into a slightly sweet musk/amber skin scent with just a touch of that bitter almond.

 

Overall it sits rather close to the skin and morphs a lot (and quickly). I get the feeling it might smell different to me on different days. I like it much, much more than I expected to and I'll be getting multiple bottles. Just by the nature of the scent it might be completely different in a year, but even if it smells the same on me I bet it'll age beautifully.

[SadariEvenstar]

"Oh wow, I didn't expect this to be so wearable. It's pretty musky and kind of nice...."

 

-and then-

 

The florals start to push forward, green tentacles that wrap themselves around me and start to squeeze. My face begins to ooze..... My throat constricts....

 

Bpal, the prettiest poison.

[Dark Alice]

This smells like one of my perfume boxes. Musky, light florals, aquatics with a pretty light vanilla. I LOVE IT!

[KatyC]

From reading the other reviews, clearly this one is very different person-to-person (and bottle to bottle, maybe?).

 

So for my experience...in the bottle it smells exactly like Haribo sour cherries, right down to the fizziness - I haven't tried Chattering Teeth yet but it's just how I expect that to smell.

 

Then the moment it touched my skin all the fruity sweetness and fizz disappeared, and it became that familiar bpal musky skin scent. I was pretty disappointed because as much as I like musky scents I was hoping for something a bit more interesting. Over the next couple of hours it kept morphing and went through a worrying 'household cleaner' phase, before ending up as a sweet musk with a slight metallic edge. Definitely an interesting one, with a pleasant end result and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out next time I wear it!

[zankoku_zen]

I get chocolate, Snake Oil, incense, dabs of leather, and absinthe. Its a mish mash of notes and it sort of smells when you've had imps living together for far too long and they've kinda leaked around the seal and it just sort of all blends together. Fun, exotic, and a little weird.

[Astarial]

Wow, this really changes all the time. In the bottle, this smells like cherry leather, with perhaps a bit of chocolate. Maybe a bit spicy. I don't get anything bitter, herbal, or woody. On the skin, the cherry fades to a more general fruity sweetness, and the leather is replaced by a slightly powdery musk and amber vibe. A slight medicinal quality comes out, and the leather sneaks back in with some white florals. I stopped tracking it closely at this point, but it kept shifting - later in the day I got an aquatic vibe, and then later than that it was sort of dusty and bookish.

 

I don't smell any of the notes that generally amp on my skin, like red musk or clove. And it never enters a phase I really don't like. I'm very glad I got a bottle. I probably won't wear it very often, but like others have said it's a pretty good choice for when you don't know what you want to smell like that day.

[mermaidsdream]

I didn't get much from sniffing the bottle. Applied, it initially smells like nail polish remover. Then it constantly morphs with something astringent, something floral, and I'm so very glad I didn't wear this to work because ugh. Definitely not a favourite, and not something I'd be keeping.

[Little Bird]

First on, this smells like damp dirt, clean spring rain, and touches of green herbs and moss. Outdoorsy and pleasant. Dries down with more of a creamy, vanilla-y floral layered over the rain, dirt and green. Reminds me of the original Banded Sea Snake a little, but less sweet and rich, more clean and floral.

 

Clean, creamy, white floral with a bit of vanilla, rain and dirt. It's nowhere near as chaotic or strange as I was expecting.

Misty, perfumey/white musky, white florals and vanilla musk with underpinnings of dirt and mystical herbs.

[Katillac]

This does not smell anything like my current Imp box, but man does it smell like my box back in '09 when i discovered i loved metallics and metallics loved me.

 

​I do get some herbs/spice, but mostly on me it's a creamy steel. Like if Ignanok Jewelers was an ice cream flavor. With maybe some cinnamon flakes on top.

 

​Looking at the other reviews, this is obviously a scent really controlled by skin chemistry from person to person.
​I'm really happy i went ahead and bought 2 bottles, because it's just so much fun. I'm excited to see how it changes with me.

 

​Smelling it really does make me smile because it brings me back to a really fun time in my life.

 

ETA: After trying it again today (since a forum member suggested I wait a few months to let things settle), the crazy did not slow down. Wet it smelled like fried chicken (I wish I could make a fancier description, but I literally smelled like delicious fried chicken to the point where I got hungry). Thankfully for about 3 seconds, though. Then it went SUPER mint (to the point where my wrists were cold) and then relaxed into a leather/floral/cake scent. Sadly, it had a low throw when it got to that point.
​I just now realized I didn't roll my oil before applying it, so that might have been the cause of the mint surge.
​I still love it because yes, I do want to smell like a leather flower cake.

 

​This is still one of my favorites! I'm glad I got two bottles because I really want to see what this smells like in 5 ish years.

[LizziesLuck]

I absolutely had to own this scent. I don't even care if it's horrid on me, I just need it in my collection! (Mostly because I have always wanted to know what it smells like at the Lab - and I assume this will be it!)

 

 

Wet: Sweet. A bit...lemony? I can detect the Lab's champagne note, which makes sense because I amp it. There's also...cherry? Nope, that's almond, doing that cherry thing. So weird to see what my skin picked out of a slew of every scent ever. Oh there's vanilla bean under it all. And cake! This changes constantly. It feels like Willy Wonky meets The Lab. It's like magic, and I am grinning like a child. There's something green and fresh coming out that I really like! Oooh, I think I detect a bit of the Lab's Popcorn note? It's a bit buttery. OK, I'm going to stop now till it's dry, or I will drive myself nuts. I will say, I expected this to be SO STRONG, because it's like the whole Lab in a bottle, but it's quite subtle and soft so far! (Pavement! Musk! Ok, seriously, I am stopping now).

 

 

Dry: A dark leather note starts to come out, and the champagne re-emerges. It reminds me of something that could have come from Haute Macabre. Champagne and leather and mystery, that's what Lab Rat is on me. LOVE IT.

[Poenari]

Lab Rat is so much fun! At first sniff, it really does have that quintiscentual (see what I did there ) BPAL box smell! My collection is made up primarily of incense, musk, Dragon's blood, and other resin scents, with a heavy dose of patchouli and Snake Oil. So imagine my surprise when this wears so close to the skin! It doesn't scream out, and I don't amp any particular note that I usually amp. I do detect a hint of leather, a note I avoid, but it doesn't dominate. I think folks will either pick out their most loved notes or their death notes; seems like this could go either way. But for me, it's a lovely way to introduce someone to the wonders of BPAL by sticking my wrist under their nose and asking what they think I'm wearing. HAHAHA- no one will ever guess, but I bet they will be intrigued enough to enter the rabbit hole of our love!

[doomsday_disco]

In the bottle: When this arrived, it mainly smelled of almond and leather straight out of the mailbox. It's settled for over a week now, and now it mainly smells like leather and syrupy cherry to me (more than almond, though I do get that cherry-almond association here). I may be some resins and spices in the background, but mostly, it's CHERRY LEATHER to my nose at the moment. It does not remind me of any of my imp bags or the smell I get when I open a plastic TARDIS full of them.

 

Wet: Cherry leather is actually what I'm getting on my skin, too. Then it threatens to turn into a bar of soap. It's actually a rather light scent. Florals, resin, and then the Lab's wine note, perhaps? There's a fruity note that I'm getting that's more prominent in the throw of the scent than when I sniff my wrist. It's fruity, powdery leather up close. My skin is just like, what is this fuckery?

 

Dry: Yeah, that's the Lab's wine note and musky leather with lots of powderiness. Despite the wine and leather I mentioned, it is not reminiscent of Perversion on me (I enjoy that scent, but this is verging on headache-inducing). Then it starts becoming incense-y, and I think I can smell some frankincense when I inhale deeply. Several hours later, it's like a sweet, powdery incense-y scent before it loses its sweetness and becomes a faint powdery scent with no notes that I can discern.

 

Verdict: On a positive note, I didn't end up amping a bunch of notes that don't work on me, but on the other, I couldn't see myself reaching for this if I kept it in my collection, and it nearly veered into headache territory. I will hold onto it for some time to see what aging does to it, but there's a good chance that I'll end up putting this one up for swap in the future.

[Nikki Scarlet]

I had to try this. My friend and I generally go in on orders together and buy big bulk packages, and we love opening the box to smell the combined scent of everything we've bought (oh, if we could only bottle the scent of our most recent order!). And of course, now that I'm a few orders in, the box I keep all my BPAL imps and bottles in smells amazing. I went in kind of hoping that this would capture that, but really, I would want this even if it smelled horrible, pretty much just for the lols.

 

In the bottle:
Uhhhh . . . .
Kinda like . . . medicine? I'm getting a bit of chocolate. A bit of dark cherry. Cherry almond? A lot of booze. Aaaand a whole lot of tingling static. @_@ It seriously reminds me of static. Like the feeling you get when a part of your body goes numb, but in smell form.

Wait, I think there was a bit of citrus there.

Something floral? Wait--

Corn syrup?

Pine? Wood?

Men's cologne?

HOW IS THIS ALL HAPPENING IN ONE TINY BOTTLE?


On me, wet:
Candy-- no, wait, leafy. Boozy aloe. Wat.

Plastic. Uhhh some kind of candy I tried once and didn't like. Um, wafers drizzled with rum. Someone above mentioned the smell of wafers and I'm agreeing with them. Wafers are present and seem to show up the most frequently of any note that pops up. It's like wafer cookies and the icing is EVERY OTHER FLAVOUR EVER.

On me, dry:
Pain apples? Engine coolant. Household cleaner you can eat.

. . . A fresh breeze followed by a dunk in a mountain river. Snow.

Mm, yeah, after its lolrandom phase I'm getting a lot of "fresh, clean" smells, tinted with a little bit of aquatics and a little bit of greenery. There's still a chemical/bitter-sweet something-or-other in the background, though. Tiny bit of lemon/lime pops up in the aquatic overall scent right now - like a glass of lemon water.

It seems to be staying in its "fresh" phase now. It's a bit bitter (kind of metallic, actually) around the edges, but I come away smiling after every sniff. Quite pleasant and not at all what I expected!

. . . A little later, I'm getting a bit of a dried flower scent alongside the fresh air/greens/aquatics. Purple flowers. Lavender, I think? Slowly morphing to white floral with a bit of soft fruit (pear?). Then back to fresh air and clean water. Bit of clean linen, as well. I feel like I've been doing laundry out in a tiny cottage in the mountains.

. . . Aaaand much later, I woke up from a nap and it was mostly gone, but the lingering smell left behind is kind of reminding me of crumbly graham cracker mixed with rose petals.


Verdict:
Honestly, I'd be happy to own this even if it was the worst, but I'm genuinely enjoying it. Don't think I'd wear it out of the house, but it's definitely a ride and a half - an olfactory adventure for an otherwise quiet day. I'm guessing the experience will change each time I try it, too. Wheee!

[Fiam]

This is CRAZY TALK! Many personalities one bottle.

I'm getting non-stop leather with multiple notes swirling around. Each time I open the bottle it smells like something different....citrus, champagne, absinthe, fruit, floral, herbal. sweet, smokey, anise, b-vitamins. Sour patch kids, It's INSANE!

[fairybites]

I can't even review this accurately because there's so much going on and it shifts a million times. If you've got an imp box filled with various GC scents, that's pretty much exactly what this smells like. Every note in existence blended together. The only thing I can specifically pick out is rose because I think I amp that, and I bet that's from a Mad Tea Party oil. Maybe linen or baby powder. 

 

A lot of fun to test and bonus points for the awesome label. You never know what you're gonna get when you wear this. If you want to try something similar, check out Carnaval Rat. Same idea, but it's Carnaval Diabolique scents instead of the General Catalog!

[broccoliwitch]

I got this from @doomsday_disco, I couldn't pass on the concept and cool label art!

 

in the bottle medical, sweet, aquatic, almost stomach churning but i want to smell it? i don’t usually do aquatic or medicinal so i’ve never smelled anything like this.

 

wet is fizzy cola? no, ozone and herbs. no, back to fizzy cola. its a warm and wet smell with a little green and a little sweet. this smells like medicine again but good? like an herby medicine my dad would make for me. it seems it’s decided to be cherry cola medicine for a while, I dig it. oh nope, we are back to ozone. this makes me want to try more ozone and rain scents, wow.  partner says it smells like incense which is so interesting because I really avoid those kinds of scents but I think that's the sweetness. its almost headache inducing so if I wore this it would have to be a tiny dab or behind the knees.

 

dry is even sweeter, i definitely understand why they said incense now. hmm I'm not an incense person at all so idk about this. I definitely would not have usually bought this for myself but this was a novelty buy. I wanted to smell what something aged was like and i can definitely see how incense would become strong. hmm it almost smells like fizzy pop incense. I did not expect this to get so sweet! I wonder if I boost sweet or if this is the oil? do I like incense smells? what is happening? I seriously considered scrubbing several time because of the almost headache but I powered through and now I like it? I think I'm getting leather now? something warm and dark. oh my god, its cinnamon! oh I love this. I have to breath deep to get it now but its cinnamon/spice with a touch of fruit skin scent. yeah this is a wear at home because i wont stop smelling myself.

 

this morphed so much! it's been about 5 months and this has been my go to office perfume. I still love it but I feel like it doesn't last as long on me.

 

my plan is to use up what I have and make my own lab rat with my favorite imps! I seriously love this art so much!

[Cali]

Interesting! I'm getting florals, fruits, aquatic, cacao, greens... it's not screaming-in your face at all, thought the concept might make you think otherwise. It's nice, i just can't pinpoint anything?