sarada

What's wrong with me, that I never reviewed this? I adore this scent. Actually I think my review was eaten when the forum was up and down a lot earlier this year.

So let's try it again:

Cold stone, ivy, slightly sweet, slightly sour fruits and wine, wood soaked with sweet cold wine, damp greenery.

I tend to think of this scent as a series of adjectives, since it has so many distinct fragrances talking to me in unison.

Cold, fruity greenery. Wine caskets swollen with subterranean dampness. Damp stones.

It escapes being purely fruity, because these are musty fruits -- a painting of a still life iced over by dust in the cellar.

As it dries there is less fruit and it is more like dark wood and stone on which a dry wine has splashed. It's a faintly sour and purple wine that strengthens with time.

I love the complexity of this. It's a bit of a cousin of Black Tower...less woody and smoky though.

The four Maelstrom scents I initially ordered back when they debuted are still among my favorite LEs ever and this series is probably still my favorite series thus far.

I've been wearing this to bed at night...surrounded by the dark spicy warmth, and the almost soporific smoky leather. Darkest clove and blackest leather, spiked with sharp ginger for a moment. I don't smell patchouli as a distinct element but I know it's in there, a layer of black soil grounding these deep spices. I don't like cinnamon and I don't smell it, but the overall feeling is of deep, burnt spices buried in black earth and smothered in body-warmed leather.

 

It is quite a bit different from Dracul, which had strong notes of mint along with clove and a bit of orange, along with the smoky/earthy notes. Dracul is in my top ten GC scents and Count Dracula is just at the edge of my top ten LEs now but I like so bloody many it's getting harder and harder to choose!

 

If anyone is ever looking for the scent of a burning clove cigarette in a bondage club, you know where to send them. But I really don't associate it with that so much as just the scent of darkness...and a strange, comforting warmth when there is danger all around. This is something that I want to smell like...I would just want to get closer to someone who smelled like this, and bury my nose in their hair and skin to find the source of that incredible aroma.

 

This is my favorite of the four OotD scents I have tried so far, and since I ordered the ones that sounded the most likely successes for me it will probably be my favorite of the whole batch!

 

p.s. it reminds me of the 4FatCats wax tart scent "Dad's Jacket" btw!

Whoops, I forgot to review this one when I got my package on Monday and went on a mad sniffing spree. Fortunately I've had a chance to test it at great length in the intervening days!

 

Being a fan of "heavy woods" I had my money on something kind of dark and smooth but this is a powdery, dry wood. At first the blend as a whole smells like Yggdrasil but a little more incense dust, a little more piney herbs. It's the box of old incense that is in my closer, or a breath of air through a dry, pine-needle carpeted forest.

 

Somewhere between The Rat King and Yggdrasil, but with a bit more green, dusty herbs. I like it best in its early stages, though it fades quickly. Unlike The Castle, which grew stronger as I wore it, this started to fade into the ambient smell of the woods that I was walking through when I first tested it.

 

It's definitely in the family of scents that I like but I will probably have to wear it in a locket to keep it strong and fresh. I see the pale straight trees in Yggdrasil shadowing an abandoned wooden building overgrowing with ivy and greenery, and motes of dust suspended in a pale shaft of light.

I know a lot of blue ones that I got were arriving with broken lips...I think that's about when they switched to amber, they seem to be of better quality. Over the years I've had a few blue ones arrive with chipped lips or crunched caps, but the amber ones are always fine.

Samhainophobia is, for me, the perfection of Samhain.

 

When I first tried Samhain '04 it went through a very deeply smoky, piney stage early on, and that is what this is, through and through. In the bottle, while it's mostly sweet, dark, earthy vetiver, it rapidly morphs into that woodsmoke Samhain scent on my skin.

 

As with the other reviews I am writing today, I tested this in the woods, and I think the fragrance really took off on me in that setting. Surprisingly, I smell just about everything that is in Samhain, in this -- the cidery deep apple and spiciness, but much stronger in this are the woodsmoke, dark pine and smooth, earthy vetiver.

 

Oh yes, this is a sarada scent. This will bump Samhain down a notch on my ever-lengthening favorites list.

I tested this on my right wrist on a massive test-a-thon today right before I went for a long walk in the woods. I figured that the crisp autumn air and forest would help to set the scents loose in their natural environment.

 

The Castle smells faintly resiny in the bottle and the woodiness is similar to that in Carceri d'Invenzione. Actually, the slightly sweet, resiny scent that I get from this might be dragon's blood...I can't quite tell the colour of the oil but I think it may be slightly rosy, holding it up to the light.

 

This really deepens upon wearing it. The wood scent resolves itself into what I think is redwood, judging from my imp of the single note. It has a moist, pale, pulpy wood quality to it, not the green pine that I was expecting. This is more of a warm, soft, spongy woodpulp.

 

The Castle lasts and lasts, and that redwood and dragon's blood love my skin. I had expected a very green scent but this is a pale red and muted soft brown in my mind. Now that I am testing it at home, and the natural scents of the forest aren't confusing my overloaded senses, it is a much stronger, and more clear scent to me. Highly recommended to fans of Carceri d'Invenzione, particularly if you don't mind a touch of dragon's blood.

 

As it dries, the faintly spicy aroma of crumpled dry leaves is released into the air, and the moist wood pulp becomes a dry, powdery, sweet and slightly spicy wood. Very complex, morphing scent and very much up this forest girl's alley.

My first thought upon sniffing this: wintergreen. I'll be honest, it made me think of Ben-Gay, which I could actually use right now since my back hurts. But it's not something I typically want to smell like. Actually, there is a Chinese white flower oil my mom gave me to use on muscle aches and it also reminds me of that...very medicinal, wintergreen, menthol.

 

I immediately start thinking that this will not be a keeper, but I put some more on and let it dry for awhile. After all, I was testing four scents at once and I was IN the woods, so there were a lot of circumstances around my first sniff!

 

As it dries it reminds me more of cold flowers ... maybe like the flowers in Arkham Revisited, pale pink and blue, and a blast of minty forest air. The drydown reveals all of the color of this blend, all of the frosty flowers and lichen-encrusted stone. The Ben-Gay scent becomes almost unnoticeable after a short time. (eta: that was based on my in-the-woods test of this, but when I tried it at home the Ben-Gay scent did in fact dominate for much longer...maybe my in-the-woods experiment picked up on some natural outdoor scents as well).

 

I was hoping for something very woodsy and piney touched with flowers and though there's a hint of that, the wintergreen scent really turns me off. I'll try it a couple more times before deciding what to do with it though...it's not quite like anything else in my collection so I may want to keep it for the winter to see what it does.

Before the reviews started to come in, I was hoping this wouldn't be too much lemon and coconut -- but there's such a strange mixture of dark and light, sweet and smoky in this that I didn't know what to expect.

 

It is, indeed, lemon and coconut at first, but smoothed out a bit with the musk and smoky tones. What is it about anything lemony that just dominates a blend so much? Still, I'm enjoying the way that musk and smoke make it a dusky, dark lemon. This feels sophisticated but playful, in a strange way. It's like showing up to a kiddie carnival in a black leather bodysuit with a feathered mask.

 

It lasts much longer than I'd expect anything that lemony to last. I never get heliotrope, which is a scent I really like so that's a shame...or apricot flower either, really. But this could get some wear in the next month as it's festive, a little candy-like and catches the dark autumn air quite nicely.

Say 'incense' and I perk right up. I'm even open to sugared incense. Even with night-blooming flowers, and those have given me wee stabby headaches from time to time. Put that all together and I think this is my favorite of the four in Act I, but I think I'm glad I didn't get a bottle after all because I'm just not seeing myself wearing it enough.

 

The incensy elements are like those in Cracked Bell to me -- it's a bit perfumey and ozone but there are hints of champa in it. Not getting so much the sugared aspect, but the florals are definitely suspended in the air alongside little wafts of that slightly dusty incense scent.

 

It does make me a tiny bit queasy though, kind of like Chrysanthemum Moon did. I can't really account for why. But even though I love the faintly sweet echo of smoky champa in the distance, it's crowded out a bit by a powdery cloud of perfumey florals.

 

This actually matched very well with the dress I was wearing today (a hippie dress with draping, bright orange bell sleeves and otherwise mostly black), so I am glad that I have some of this to suit those strange moods where I feel both brightly hippyish but secretly dark and brooding. I'm not getting that "gotta have!" feeling though.

Wow -- bright, spicy cherry, sparkling with lemon and shot through with spicy cardamom. Lots of cardamom. A bit like Alone, with the cardamom grounded in patchouli, but -- this is Alone wandering through a psychedelic red and yellow carnival arcade, with flashing golden lights and bright cherry-red clown noses flashing.

 

Cherry gummies, red hots, lemon drops, dusted with cinnamon sugar -- all shining against a dark backdrop. Or perhaps it's a candy castle in the dark woods at night.

 

It's lovely, even though it's not my typical thing to wear. I get all the cardamom I need from Alone, and I only like that when I layer it with Geek. Cherry reminds me too much of almond, and lemon just isn't a good scent on me. So while I appreciate the imagery I get from this -- a lot! -- it's going to be a sniffer but not a keeper.

Tobacco smoke, black patchouli and white pine bark are just about the three best things in the universe, in my book. There's really nothing better. I could die happy with nothing but bottles of those three substances to smell.

 

Unfortunately, almond and milk are the bane of my existence. It's not an allergy, just an intense dislike. Almond pierces my brain and churns my stomach. Milk always, always smells sour to me. Almond milk is a queasy headache of a proposition and I'm immediately turned off by the smell floating atop this amazing piney woody bouquet.

 

Not sure about the sarsaparilla, it might be contributing to that initial sour milky almond that turns me off.

 

Ahh, but it dries down to something completely different. Now it is like Golden Priapus. It's a soft golden vanilla pine. A glorious green-gold, shining, pure and clear. Gorgeous pine backed up with a touch of wood and earth. No more almond milk. Now it is a lovely thing to behold.

 

I don't think I would wear it though because of the early stage...it's hard to get through. I think I might just get Golden Priapus in a bottle some day, to get that same delicious pine. Some day, my tobacco, patchouli and pine scent will come though!

I really love Dorian, which is a bit of a surprise since I really dislike vanilla and sweet scents in general, but there's just something very special about that blend. So, I had high hopes for this blend too! And it is very similar indeed at first.

 

There is a very crisp, glittering freshness to this, a bit closer to Black Opal perhaps but very sugary. Very much like the sugar in La Fee Verte actually, and a touch of that lemony sparkle that must be the bergamot in Earl Grey.

 

I think Theodosius is ultimately a little too sugary though --- someone trying to spoon sugar into their tea accidentally dumped in the whole sugar bowl and the lemons too! I'm not getting the musk that anchors Dorian and I'm really surprised that the fougere isn't taking off on my skin like lavender incense.

 

A friend had said this has a woodsmoke stage on her after awhile and i do get a bit of a smoky wisp after a halfhour or so...perhaps that is the fougere, which has a very smoky quality on me. But it's not quite doing it. I think I'll play around with the few drops that I have, but Dorian is the winner and still champ in the sugared tea battle!

I had expected something more aquatic and glassy in tone from this, with the cucumber and mysterious blue lotus -- this is a much more luxurious, heady, thick, sweet fruit floral than I had expected.

 

In fact, the pear blows me away at first -- it reminds me of the fruits that sparkle at the top of Hanging Gardens, which also contains pear (perhaps the same one?). Tropical, fruity blooms. If motia attar=jasmine sambac=pikake, then that would be what I smell. It's a lush, thick, sweet floral nectar -- not the sharp jasmine spike through the brain, but a soothing sweet jasmine tea with a succulent lotus leaf floating on top.

 

It's a bit floral for my taste in general, but the fruitiness and the staying power of that pale musk pull it together and I want to keep it around. It dries down beautifully as well. Although I don't always wear things in the jasmine family well, sometimes it just combines right with other elements and gives me a scent I used to catch in the air at night...an intoxicating, pale, honeyed jasmine that lulls me to sleep.

 

If I ever said that lotus and jasmine scents are dealbreakers for me, well, here's your evidence that I'm a hypocrite. Here's how to make them work, even on a floral-hating, earth/wood-lover like me. I don't know that I'll wear it a lot, but I think it will be a great nighttime blend and it definitely will suit me just fine when I'm in the mood for this kind of thing!

Upon first sniff, Schwarzer Mond and I are best friends. It immediately reminds me of my beloved Capricorn, with its glossy, polished wood sweet earthy notes -- and Dance of Death, with its deep green tones and hint of spicy myrrh.

 

Glistening resins and sweet, glossy dark wood, sparkling and deep. The patchouli and myrrh do pair somewhat like they do in Dance of Death, but there is so much more going on in here. It softens considerably with a little wear, becoming more like dusty, earthy woods and resins and a blanket of deep dark evergreen.

 

I can't break it down any farther than that, it's just a perfect, slightly sweet, earthy, wood and resin dream with a longlasting powdery myrrh memory and it's an immediate favorite for me. Someone is brewing a dark green potion on a wooden table cluttered with bunches of herbs and branches from fragrant evergreens. Chunks of resins and powdery incense waits a spark to set it smoking.

 

I will have to hope that one bottle is enough to satisfy me, but this is a classic, perfect blend and my Top Ten LEs once again has to get a bump to make room for this one. Choosing ten is getting harder and harder.

Just had to add: I put on Aureus tonight (after bathing with Lush's Tramp) and OH GOD do I smell good!! Thanks for reminding me how much I love this, everyone!

I'm going to scratch my head over the Torture King/High John comparison too since Torture King is a smooth dark manly smoky leathery wood with dark orange and lime smothered in resin, and High John was a migraine-inducing high-pitched perfume counter floral to me! Well you never know, skin does strange things to perfume sometimes!

 

I do see a Flower Moon=Phantom Queen comparison upthread that I can attest to though as those are two of the only florals that I like and they are very similar to this nose. And I love them both in early spring!

Oh crap, I always forget Aureus! Definitely warm, gritty, earthy resins, candlelight and glorious amber. Oh yes, Aureus indeed!!! I have a whole bottle and I keep forgetting.

 

If you can go with a little honey and herbs in with that scenario, Anubis too maybe? Honey comes out smelling sweaty on me unfortunately in all but a few blends.

Oh yeah, Tushnamatay!

 

I actually want a bottle of that really badly -- a sweet, light resiny scent...but I keep forgetting since it doesn't list notes in the description. Heh.

 

Also who can resist a scent that starts with the word "tush"?

I was very lucky to receive a gift of some of this scent, and my suspicions are right...it's perfect for me!

 

At first, I am reminded of Torture King, which was what struck me when I got a brief whiff of this at a meet 'n sniff awhile back. Like Torture King...but with less of the orangey-lime top notes that remind me a bit of Royall Lyme cologne in that blend.

 

On my skin, it becomes more smoky...leathery...woodsy. It's got that spicy wood scent that can only be myrrh, in my experience, complete with the faintly powdery phase it goes through. Myrrh in general also has that masculine cologne association for me, but in a good way. In a warm, comforting sort of way.

 

Although I don't smell those dark woody citrus notes as loud as in Torture King I feel like there must be one deeply buried in here because I keep coming back to the echoes of Royall Lyme in my subconscious...but a more musky, woodsy, myrrh-rich blend with no aftershave connotations. Maybe even a hint of pine in there somewhere.

 

It's a dark smoky woody blend and therefore it's totally my bag. It's a dad scent, too...I mean, Lyme and smoke were THE scents in my house. Nothing makes me feel quite as comfortable and at home.

So far I've been avoiding anything that lists incense because scents like Urd and Centzon Totochtin went WHAM! incense on me. So much so that I just stink like an unwashed hippy.

 

Hey, that's what some of us are going for! (needs an emoticon of an abashed-looking hippie). I've been burning incense nonstop for 20 years to cultivate that!

I tend to think that "incense" could mean just about anything, since incense can contain pretty much anything from florals to vanilla to woods. Though I do tend to think of incense as having a woody base, I don't know if it has to! "Incense" would, I think, be a broad category that could include resins but was not limited to them.

 

Penitence, Cathedral, Anne Bonny, Magus, Pit & the Pendulum, Midnight Mass, and maybe Al Azif are what I think of as the most resiny, off the top of my head.

 

The ones that I think of as "incensy" are ones that specifically have nag champa/champaca in them -- Urd, Hellion, and things that I suspect have it in them like Cracked Bell -- or things that contain Red Musk, like Scherezade, Lust, Fenris Wolf, etc.

 

Then there are the woody or pine scents, which also contain ingredients that crop up in incense a lot...

 

Anyway, may I just suggest Death Cap btw if you like earthy scents? Maybe check out resiny/earthy or perhaps wood blends rather than the vague 'incense' description, since it looks like that could also refer to smoky florals that don't contain strong resin.

 

ETA: nice list, ivyandpeony!! I remember buying bottles unsniffed of The Caterpillar and Crossroads because the word "incense" was in them but it was more of a soapy floral jasmine that gave me a headache, when I tried it on.

I kind of OD'd on scents today because I slathered myself in Black Tower before even realizing I'd have Mum Moom waiting for me at the post office today. But over the course of the day I think I've been able to test this sufficiently to put together my impression.

 

In the bottle, there is a sharp and heady, dusty floral note that I think I recognize from Harvest Moon '06 as the only note that gave me a bit of a sinus headache. But it clears after applying it...

 

Musky, dusty autumn flowers is my first impression. The mums are a bit stronger than I expected, and they soar right up my nose. There's a faint spark of spice, and it warms and sweetens a little on my skin. Smoky, sharp mums with a layer of dusty musk. It becomes a bit more mellow and almost herbal as it dries.

 

It very slightly reminds me of a sort of dusting powder I must have encountered in childhood. I am reminded of the top of my grandmother's dresser, where she kept perfumes and powders. That does NOT mean it smells like "grandmother perfume." Far from it! But I am put in the mind of antique dusting powders and turn of the century cosmetics.

 

I've seen the word "creamy" applied to it several times but I would not apply that word to it...it's a bit of a perfumey floral musk for me, a touch of ginger and a bitter herbal tang, and a heady musty swoon. It is one of the very rare blends that I would classify as an autumn floral, since I don't think of flowers when I think of autumn.

 

I'm not sure if it's going to give me a headache or not so I will have to test it more, on clean skin and in an environment free of distracting scents (like the candles and incense I have going right now). The bottle is so gorgeous I don't know if I could part with it even if it does give me a headache though!

I like the sound of almost everything in this blend -- fruit, roses, resins. I'm imagining it could be a bit too light, sweet and golden for my fickle skin but it still sounds like a classic.

 

Freshly applied, this is the same kind of very fresh, crunchy, just-bit-into-it apple that I love in Harvest Moon '06. Nothing cidery or pie-like, just very fresh, crisp apple against a glistening golden honey background. I tend to only really go for honey when it's spiked with herbs (as in Honey Moon) or incense (Masque) but I like it here too.

 

I didn't remember orange blossom as an ingredient but that comes out a little bit later and the whole blend goes a bit orangey on me (orange the color, not orange the fruit) as the peach kicks in for the final act. Not smelling the rose or resins at all...this is all about apple, honey and a hint of orange blossom.

 

Although I like fruity blends, this isn't dark or strong enough for me to wear much but I really like it and love those opening apple notes. Whatever Beth is using for apple lately is really kicking my ass! This will be hugely popular I think, and deservedly so!

I was drooling at the notes for this: patchouli, pomegranate, myrrh, blood musk and smoke are all to die for in my book, and I'm OK with dragon's blood in many blends.

 

Cassia, though....whenever dragon's blood and a spice come together in a blend there's just no escaping it. It's Michael's craft store, from October to December. It's that simmering potpourri cinnamon scent that I'm just not all that wild about. If it wasn't for the cassia I might be able to smell something else in this blend, but it's just allll that dark cinnamony scent that I don't care for.

 

After I wear it for awhile, the cinnamon scent fades and I get a bit more of the dusty, woody, incensy notes. There's a trace of the deep, heady dark red musk but I think to most people around me it would still smell like cinnamon. Damn. I just don't like cinnamon.

I'm also hung up on textbook images of dinosaurs when I read the description of this...I am fascinated by the concept behind this scent...

 

It strikes me as kind of a menthol scent at first, a strong impression of heat -- but also steam coming off of hot rocks.

 

Mists shroud a pine forest, but it's not winter -- it's warm, and the air is thick and humid after a rainstorm.

 

Now it's a block of ice melting in a cave in a tropical jungle. Maybe some sort of prehistoric beast is frozen inside, and coming back to life?

 

After the menthol scent dies down, it has a sort of damp, mineral smell to it with some impressions of dark greenery...not floral, not sweet, just once again like some sort of evergreen, but not frosty pines.

 

This is definitely worth trying, for the experience, and I think it could grow on me as a fragrance if I didn't just have so many to play with these days! Abstract, conceptual scents like these fill me with the greatest anticipation and excitement whenever there is an update.