patina

Snake Oil and green musk, black leather, black amber, ambergris accord, sandalwood incense, and oily black musk. Fresh from the mailbox, my first thought is "yep. It's Snake Oil." It's powerfully smooth vanilla with a softer version of the leather from Snake Skin. I can only pick out Snake Oil and leather right now, but I'm certain the ambergris, amber, and black musk are all doing their part to make this even smoother. No regrets. On settling, I'm only getting the barest trace of green musk, but I do get a little sandalwood. It makes the leather smell a little like suede. This is very clean, balanced leather snake oil, as another commenter said.

Powerful incense when first applied, but has short wear life. A lot like Cathedral plus rose.

I have the 2017 version. Initially I wasn't thrilled because of the chemical/cherry/powdery leather. Also my skin tends to eat leather. However, this has aged into a soft black suede. As much as I love aged Snake Oil it can sometimes be a little too sticky-sweet and foody by itself. The leather works very well for it. Less staying power on me than the original Snake Oil, but that's fine. This might be a top 20? If not top ten.

I like oudh! That said, this heavy oudh plus vetiver is also unfortunately poopy at first on me. I do get the sparkling labdanum and I could see aging and deepening Snake Oil completely solving the poop problem but those first few seconds are a little alarming. As the snake oil warms up and the vanilla scent wafts the vetiver poop transforms into something s lot more palatable, sweet, brown, warm, and a little powdery.

The red musk is a little more sour and acrid than the one I'm used to, or maybe that't the blackwood. Not that it's unpleasant, it's just that it has an almost blood-orange smell to it. Like a blood orange musk with some oudh and patchouli. The patchouli is well blended though.

At first the closest comparisons I can make are Banded Sea Snake and Snake's Kiss (though it doesn't have the lemony note). I get oak and moss predominantly. The davana really stands out to me as a powerful white floral in the middle of all that snake oil, wood, moss, and unspecified dark stuff. I think this one will get better with age, though moss also has a tendency to get deeper with age so it might get too moss heavy.

I haven't tried anything that smelled only like clean bare wood, but Yggadrasil might have that note in it. At least that's what I recall.

It's not smoky and a bit more cologne-ish but you might want to try Odic Force from the Yule's. Same eerie green.

Okay, what about goblins? I know there's Goblin, but what else?

Wine. Or actually WINE!! I get an intense burst of something that smells like the Zadok Allen Vineyard, just heavy grape with maybe some oak or darker elements in there. This may be a little sweeter than Zadok though.

Slightly burned but accurate coffee. Or maybe the snickerdoodles were left on too long. That doesn't matter because there's syrup and toasted sugar and...marshmallows? It's hard to go wrong with those notes if you want a foody atmo.

At first this is bright lime. A guy's cologne with ozone. I'm not a great fan of citrus in general but the amber manages to mellow it out and ground it a little. I would compare this to 51, although that one is a floral and has deeper elements. It seems like such a simple scent but as I wear it I find myself increasingly intrigued. I ended up getting a bottle for all those times I want to smell like unearthly green flames.

I didn't care for a lot of the gingerbreads in this Yule, but it really works with the tobacco. Maybe because my skin is good with tobacco. I wish I could describe it better, but it's just a medium, standard molasses-clove gingerbread with caramelized smelling French tobacco. The tobacco is far stronger than the gingerbread. Incredibly snuggly.

Faintly powdery blue musk with a tinge of the lab's blueberry note. Just barely edging into "foody" but not quite. I could see this in a Federalist style room with pale blue walls. almost regretting having just the one bottle.

Almond flour and dry cacao with some golden labdanum and well-behaved cherries. It's like a delicious but not too sweet or moist cake. If the labdanum only shone a little more or the patchouli were deeper then this scent would have a lot more depth, but that might happen with aging. I'm on the fence with this one.