MamaMoth

i pounced on this when it was restocked in August 2022, because it has always called to me, and i'm so glad i was able to snag it! it is really lovely, definitely a keeper. the frank and myrrh start out a little loud and churchy, but they quickly sink back into a supporting role. this is sweet, smooth honey-vanilla woods quietly supported by resins. delicious without smelling edible, sweet but not overly so. silky smooth. the honey is just ever-so-slightly musky. it's one of those blends that seemingly sinks into the skin and then radiates an aura of scent. i'm pretty sure this will get even smoother and more harmonious as it ages, i can't wait to find out.

this is such an inspired combination, and i love it! starts with a lot of tangy pine and some soft herbal lavender. as it dries, it gets pretty musky. the pine sweetens up and drops back, really twining with the lavender. some clovey spice peeps out, and it gets a bit of vanillic fluffiness. it's a little herbal and sharp on top, but just enough to pierce that thick musk and keep my nose interested. the elements really counterbalance each other perfectly!

i (mostly) love vetiver, i like black tea, and i'm not opposed to a bit of spicy gingerbread. ... this smells like a wet ashtray. wtf? as it wears, the spices and tea assert themselves a little, but that ashtray smell is still there. truly unpleasant!

this one is kind of a heart-breaker. looking at those notes, this should be an immensely safe bet for me. i keep retesting it just to be sure, because THOSE NOTES! they call to me! but i'm just not feeling it. goes on pretty dry.. plenty of patchouli, but also kind of powdery. very little honey, and not much sweetness. starbrow nailed it, it's salty and leathery. a little smoky. after some time the benzoin amps up a bit and brings a bit more sweetness, but still not much. i never get any of my beloved labdanum. sadness.

mostly bergamot and cognac on me, with oudh providing a velvety soft perfumey type base. starts bright and citrus-like with bergamot in the fore, but soon melds into a very sophisticated, mature, and high-end kind of blend to my nose, with the cognac dominating later in the wear. bright, but grounded. i instantly pictured a favorite aunt of mine who always wears expensive designer clothes and shoes, but has a warm, relatable personality. she's a woman of means, understated and classy in tastes, with a kind and humble spirit. this could be her scent. 💜 (though i will state that i think it's highly suitable for any gender.)

ok, star jasmine, i see you! it's like everything sweet and pretty about jasmine, with none of the stank. i'm really digging it, and i'll definitely be on the lookout for star jasmine in the future. this blend starts as a sweet, soft, pink candy/floral. it has such a wholesome youthful mood. as it wears, the coconut husk and oudh emerge a little, bringing in a touch of sophistication. no funk detected from either the oudh or the jasmine on my part... this one is gentle on the nose. ultimately not me, but very pretty!

opens with a big smack of red musk, which reads as fruity, syrupy sweet, and heavy on the dragon's blood. there's a dark floral component from the opium that i'm not 100% on board with at first, but it doesn't take long for it to melt into the blend. i'm new to civet but it's not making itself known to me here... nothing offensive, just extra musky and i like it, i like it a lot. weird comparison maybe, but in the drydown this is a cousin of please scream inside your snake oil on me: deep, richly resinous, extra musky, extra sweet. this is pretty great, actually. i will have to do a comparison with scream in yer snek, to see if i need both. at the very least, it's about to get civetty up in the hizzy, because woof!

unexpectedly lovely. creamy, sweet, resinous amber (possibly one of the ambers in the grey columns?) and a really sparkly effervescent champagne note. i'm not tracking anything particularly grapey, so maybe white grape? drydown reminds me of cream soda. lowish throw, but hangs around a good while.

goes on with bitey, sharply green cardamom, which yields to a sharp stab of spicy clove. toothy and agressive. eventually all that sharpness is blunted a bit by a smidge of round nutty hazelnut and a sweet-ish perfumey amber. it all gels into a nice spiced ambery hay type thing. this is exactly what i was expecting from those notes. wheaten gold, spicy, evocative of the harvest. intense opening, but nice and mellow after it settles in.

wet, i catch a lot of myrrh, cacao, and pine-needle tangy terebinth, with occasional whiffs of a smooth lovely patchouli and some dry crackly cardamom that pulls a lot more kitchen-spice-rack than cardamom sometimes can. as it dries everything just really meshes together. there's this velvety soft dry incensy cacao-myrrh base that reminds me a bit of Velvet, and which is making this kind of powdery in a good way. that terebinth is staying close to the surface though, and it's keeping my nose very interested. in general i tend to clash with rose, but i'm really not getting a whole lot of it here until hours in, and then only really close to the skin. i like this. i feel like we need to take some time to become better acquainted, because there's a lot to unpack. every time i've tried it, it presents a different aspect. today it's a lot of terebinth, which i'm really loving.

fyi, i'm a weirdo who's here for the pine pitch. initially, i am very gratified. straight from the bottle the pine pitch SLAYS. she's stout. sweetened by dragon’s blood and clove-spiced. almost immediately, the pine pitch starts giving way to the dragon's blood, which goes super sweet and fruity-floral on me as per usual. for a while, the pitch plays a nice supporting role, sharpening and roughing up the overly-sweet db a little. there's just a hint of clove. while it's not what i'd hoped for, i quite like this stage. eventually, it's mostly dragon’s blood on me. i still like it, but i miss the complexity. undecided about a bottle as of yet, we'll see how this decant ages.

this one goes on pretty foody, dark and rich and cardamom-spiced, backed by resins. the patchouli is thick and chewy, just how i like it. this blend is deep and sweet, toasty and brown. the cardamom has a spicy little kick to it. in this stage it makes me think of a spiced rum molasses cookie that browned a little on the bottom when it baked. as it settles in, everything meshes so very well. i love blends that hover in that area between sweetly foody and resiny, so this is definitely my jam. the patch is really showing out here and it's so good, mellow and sweet but very present. the benzoin and vanilla come out a bit more, softening up that deep dark richness and bringing a bit of creamy smoothness. the cardamom backs off so that it's not as spicy upfront, and it has more of that dry, toasted pitch now. past the initial application, cacao always presents as just a velvety earthiness on my skin, which holds true here as well. so i don't catch anything remotely chocolatey in this one, but i may be an outlier on that. throw and longevity do leave some to be desired, which is unexpected with this set of notes. later in the day it goes a bit dusty, so i think the cardamom and cacao are hanging on the longest. i'll be picking up a bottle and betting that improves a bit with age, because this one is a winner.

this is super delicious! butter rum candies, brown sugar, and enough clean astringent tea to cut through all the richness. i agree that one of the notes has a teensy bit of a lemony cant, either the sugar or the tea.

this is some of the best amber ever to me, hands down. it's resinous and almost syrupy, in that sweet-resins way. it smells like it might have labdanum and possibly benzoin as components? it has what some people identify as that "cola resins" quality. no smoke that i can detect. it's not light on me, either. ugh, SO GOOD.

there's a lot going on here that i love, a musky plummy smokiness that i actively seek out. but overlaying it all is a sharpness that it's hard to get past for me, which takes a while to calm. purple poison indeed. after a while that sharpness does recede somewhat, and i feel like i'm definitely catching some smoky opium. but that lethal sharpness is still in there behind it all, like a quiet threat. this is a beautiful woman in a slinky dress with a dagger hidden behind her back. eventually, all i get from this is opium perfume, absent of any allure it might have had for me in the early stages. i think this could be quite special on the right person, though.

smoky, dry vetiver, leaning towards bitterness, but brought up short by a little slinky dark sweetness from the black currant. i tend to like the 2 and 3-note blends because of their simplicity (and sometimes their hidden depth,) but this one does feel incomplete somehow. i like it though, and it might make a nice layering note.

in the bottle it's all cookie dough. chocolate chocolate chip. pretty delicious! on skin, the cookie dough drops to the back. a sweet buttery bread rises (heh) to the top, backed by a nice clean cotton (vanilla floral?) that stays soft and inoffensive, and provides a nice counterpoint to all the foody elements. i don't smell fries, but it's probably rolled into the savory bread smell for me. it's yummy, without smelling like straight up food. tl/dr: buttered bread boo! eta: i did a side-by-side sniff with olisbokollike, to compare that buttered bread aspect. the cookie dough in vanitas, which i thought had faded to a background kinda cookie sweetness, really popped back up in the comparison! except now the cookies have definitely been baked. i can smell the crispy brown edges. so now it's cookie boo? smell is weird, man.

starts off strong with a very dry, woodsy patch. i think it's red patchouli being amplified by vetiver, though i'm not detecting the latter independently. but there's something sweet peeping around the corners, and when it finally shows its face, i'm a little surprised to id it as the amber. the amber ends up just pouring a golden resiny sweetness over the whole thing. i get a wee little pinch of cardamom after a while, but i have to go looking for it. i can't find the juniper at all, which is a plus for me. when it's too heavy-handed it codes as masculine to my nose this is just gorgeous. alluring and gothic, but not dark at all to me.

i love almost any amber, but this is my favorite: resinous and sweet, almost sticky, like petrified sap. it's really elevated here with cardamom's dry spiciness. this blend is really gorgeous. doesn't last long on me though, which is a huge bummer.

vaguely aquatic tobacco, with a hint of tea. sweet, but not SWEET sweet. not bad, but not for me. i was hoping for a richer, sweeter milk note, and maybe a little mildew funk.

I've skipped this one entirely, because peach is not a note i generally enjoy on myself. though i have been curious, because i love me some snake-adjacents. my curiosity was satisfied when i was frimped this in a recent swap <3. turns out i like it much more than i thought i would! starts as a very syrupy peach with maybe a hint of snake oil elements (but not actually snake oil to my nose.) settles in as musky lite snake oil with a hint of fuzzy peach skin. it's not super-recognizable snake oil, so it's possible i wouldn't recognize it if i didn't know it was there. surprisingly quite nice!

when i first applied this, i thought it was pleasant enough to keep, maybe something i'd reach for on hot days when i wanted something light. but as the day has worn on, i have actually grown to love it. i wouldn't say it betrays too much of either its snake oil or its sticky bat roots. it's a beautiful lemon musk sweet tea. the real master stroke here is the white tea. it lifts everything up with just brush of astringency. the effect is a musk-heavy blend that still reads as "clean." lemon has a tendency to disappear on me, but i'm finding that it melds with musk very nicely, giving the musk some zing and the lemon some longevity. i discovered this phenomenon in penis bound with gold ribbon, and it holds true here as well. this is also one of those blends that seems to sink in, disappear, then subtly radiate from your pores all throughout the day. i will treasure this bottle, and would probably grab a backup if the occasion arose.

you know those days when you just walk around with that smug, I-smell-amazing feeling? that's me today, wearing paduan killer swarm. spicy, licorice-y, creamy coconut. dries down kind of dry, and i get some amber and sandalwood here. the spiciness is soft and rich. it doesn't smell like morocco, but the soft creamy spiciness evokes a similar mood. the spice has more of an edge, but it's not sharp. i remember them being more aggressive when it was new, but it has aged to mellow perfection. as it settles in for the long haul, the amber rises to the top to give it a perfume waft. it's a creamy yet dry, gently spiced amber, with a light hint of coconut and licorice. simply gorgeous.

starts with a sour, almost vinegary red wine, but that gives way to a deeper velvety plummy oud. but something is off. there's something stale, soapy, and floral that starts to amp on me like crazy. rose and jasmine maybe? it smells like an old-fashioned floral perfume now. bummer.

i'm gonna say black, brown, and red musks, because it seems like i smell them in very distinct stages. opens with black, kind of heavy and soapy. not my favorite musk, but it never reaches its full potency. black gives way to brown, furry and snuggly. eventually red musk wins out on my skin, sweet and snake-oily. i like that stage very much. the other musks are not invisible, but they're just bolstering the red and it's pretty sexy. now the other stuff. in the bottle, it's potent af. sharp evergreen and heavy musk and resin and scorchy vetiver. it's kind of a lot, but i know that my skin tames a lot of those things so let's do this. there's definitely a lemony type thing going on at first. not real citrus, something lemon-adjacent. myrrh, vetiver, and black musk have all thrown me a lemony curveball in the past, so it could be any or all or none of them. WHO KNOWS? i like it though. along with that evergreen note, it gives some necessary lift to all that heavy stuff. it threatens to go a little soapy for a bit while the black musk holds sway, but never quite gets there before another musk takes over. i love the way red musk and vetiver play off one another, the sweetness and the scorch. that's what came out on top for me, boosted by the darker musks and incensey myrrh, with green and lemony top notes that hold it aloft. it actually ends up quite sweet. i like this. maybe a lot. it smells a little like that first whiff when you open the bpal box.