patina

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.

This is a bit heavy on the leather and teak which gives it a kind of cologne sense. It almost smells like celery at a close sniff. I get an occasional waft of plummy sweet lavender but I don't think the up-close smell is worth it. Very sophisticated though. After some aging the celery has calmed down though the leather is still prominent. I get sticky plum with cologne and red musk too. Now I can finally see the comparison to The Shadow in the Elevator

Nice! The vetiver mixes with and tones down the gingerbread. I'm not getting charred wood from it at all. The blackcurrant is dark and perfumy while just hinting at jam.

I could tell there was a blue element without reading the notes. Champaca is sometimes bad on me but this isn't at all. There's certainly an evergreen presence here too, though the scent softens it. This is very different from Perchta's sweet white powder snow, it's more ice for one thing. It is sweet in it's own right because of the resins. Almost a pineapple ice scent. It's a bit like a blue moon (or one of the lab's Blue Moons) hanging over an ice and snow covered fir tree in the dead of night. It's going to be a hard call deciding on a bottle between this and Perchta 2018.

The rum and tobacco worried me in the vial because sometimes rum smells a bit off on me. No worries, the other scents are strong enough to hold their own, all that toffee and sweet pink rose musk, and just a bit of spice. This is one seriously cheerful scent for me, but then I wouldn't expect a supernatural polka themed scent to have a solemn feel. It's a bit pink but the rum and tobacco give it a unisex edge. Ideal cold winter scent, because I don't know whether the tobacco would be too overwhelming in warm weather. There's something very old fashioned about this in a toffee in an old country store sort of way.

If you ever wanted Shub Niggrath, but didn't want the darker parts of that scent, this is for you. It's really delicious, but then I've yet to try on a gingerbread scent that wasn't.

Sadly underwhelmed by this one, but then coffee bean isn't my favorite note. It is the standard fruity coffee bean. The gingerbread is softened by the vanilla here. Don't get me wrong, it smells great! It's just not my favorite gingerbread scent.

This was a difficult one. I almost bought a bottle straight away because I love red musk and clove. When I first put it on I was underwhelmed by a scent like stale mint that must be the anise. The red musk was unusually shy and the opium and flat patchouli just made everything smell even more stale, like candy gone bad. However, I've only been wearing it a little while and the scent's already warmed up and gotten better. There still isn't a lot of throw but the red musk has gotten over some of its shyness. I think once the patchouli's had the chance to age a little this is going to smell amazing. Edit: After settling a while the clove has come out and it no longer smells like mint. So now it's red musk, anise, and clove, and also weirdly like a clove-scented candy cane.

I just tried on a lot of Yule scents but this one is easily my favorite. But then I do like oude and sweet scents especially if they have non gourmand base notes. (The "stale cardboard" note some reviewers got was certainly oude.) Mostly caramelized toffee with a spicy roasted note. The oude quickly becomes the strongest note though it's always spiced and sweetened by the other notes. That means that this is not a primarily foody scent. I do get coffee, the normal fruity coffee bean note which never smells exactly like the drink, but it stays in the background. This is ideal for a cold, chilly day.

I think Pop Art would be represented best by simple colored musk scents. Also tin, plastic, and metal scents. However, a fembot would wear Pink Fuzzy Handcuffs from the lupers.

I think California Leaf-Nosed Bat would be another good WTNV scent: Nightfall in the desert: Mojave yucca, creosote bush, saguaro, dusty clove, and sacred datura. Maybe Scarlet Horror for Desert bluffs or the Night Vale Council too.

If this was offered in bottle sizes I'd get one so fast. I've said before I don't care for lavender. As a cologne it can go murky and weird but this is nice. A "pure" lavender as someone else said. It's a blast of pure sage and lavender at first, followed by something sweet and deep, neither too herbal nor too dirty and more than one-note sweetness. This amps on me but I don't mind. Maybe like TKO (I don't know I haven't tried TKO, but deeper with extra oomph.

I do smell the cola-ish labdanum, though this is not particularly a dark labdanum on me. I do get clove, but not as much as I anticipated. The truly weird part is that this all meshes together to sort of smell like candlewax. Dusty old candlewax. And maybe white coconut meat?? It's odd. Low throw. Tested next to Suffragium, they're much alike, but that one's more wood, this is more light clove and a little smoke. Come to think of it, that smoke plus the oiliness of the labdanum may be why I get candle wax.