forspecial_plate

This is a beautiful, soft cocoa scent. Cocoa can be a problem note for me, sometimes my skin turns it quite dusty. That doesn't happen here, or at least not enough to ruin the scent. I can smell the Snake Oil and also rice milk. I drink rice milk a lot and wouldn't have thought it has much of a smell. It's there, though, and mixes wonderfully with the cocoa and Snake Oil spices. I think the rice milk gives the scent a little more sweetness. After a while, I think I can smell the teak but I'm not sure. If so, it's very subtle. This is an exotic scent. A little sweet but dry at the same time. I like it.

Sarada is right...my very first impression of Green Tree Viper is "Thin Mints!!", even though there's no chocolate. It's a cool green mint (cool blooded?), not icy like bpal's wintry blends. There is a little bit of spiciness that I think is the Indonesian spices from Snake Oil, just peeking out a bit. For quite a while, the green tea and bergamot were nowhere to be found on my skin. Eventually they do come out a little bit, but at no point does this have a strong citrus feel for me (I'm sure this will vary from skin to skin). It's all about the mint! Tramp is right, the mint does tone down after a few minutes, and it's like a spicy mint after that. This is something I'll wear again. Possibly a great scent for the summer heat, especially if you're not in the mood for something ICY like Cloister Graveyard In the Snow. Edit: I put this on today, almost 3 months later, and just a little aging has made a big difference! The bergamot is much more assertive. And the Snake Oil is much more noticeable. Basically the scent has gained a lot more depth and fullness, and some darkness too. It's really amazing.

King Cobra is a BIG scent....dark and dramatic, resinous. I can definitely smell a lot of frankincense and maybe the copal too.....I'm not sure I can tell them apart. There is a powdery aspect to this, as resins often do to me...this might keep me from wearing it more often, but I do want to have it on hand to wear when the mood strikes me. For the first few minutes, I could smell the spices and vanilla of Snake Oil. Now they're still there, but intermingling with the resins in a swirly dark dance. It's like different shades of color so dark that they're hard to tell apart....but slowly twisting in harmony.

Had a chance to spend some time with this today, so I'll go ahead and review it. Banded Sea Snake works really well on me! At first, I'm getting something surprisingly minty that I wasn't expecting. Could that be the sea moss? I'm not sure but after a few minutes, the scent goes through some changes. It strikes me as a murky green scent. I think of being about 10 feet under water, looking up at bright shafts of light falling through the green water. And there's the snake, swimming with graceful curves above my head. I don't get a whole lot of oakmoss, at least not the way I think of that note. After a while the olive leaf comes out more strongly, and it's a note that's growing on me. I recognize it from Lycaon and....was it in Haloa? I think so. Anyway, through all this, I didn't get a whole lot of Snake Oil either. It might be there, but the scent was working really well on its own, so I sort of forgot about the Snake Oil aspect. So basically.....this is a murky green aquatic scent with shafts of brightness, starts out minty, finishes with olive leaf. I wouldn't have thought that this would be a favorite. As it turns out, I really like it! edit to add: I do also get that touch of saltiness that Tramp mentioned in her review.

At first sniff, in the vial, this is rich and sugary, flavored a little with cocoa or chocolate. It's almost buttery in its richness, reminding me of the sweetness of Creepy or Sugar Skull '05 (if you haven't smelled those, well, just think rich melted or crystallized sugar), but without fruits. After less than a half hour, most of the richness and sweetness has faded, and now what I smell is a very familiar incense. I've smelled this before but I can't put my finger on exactly which flavor of incense it reminds me of...but it's very reminiscent. I want to say sandalwood but I don't think that's it. But sandalwood might be a part of it. Possibly a touch of some kind of berry? I'm not sure. Through all this, the Snake Oil is there, in the background. You can smell it in the vial, and through the different morphing stages, mostly if you sniff up close, but not so much in the throw. I have a feeling that with some aging, or maybe even after a few days (I just opened the package a few minutes ago), the Snake Oil might come out more strongly. So, do I like it? Yes, definitely! Very nice scent with chocolate and incense, and subtle spices of Snake Oil. Great stuff! edit: Oops, sorry Tramp! I was so excited about trying this one, I forgot you had already reviewed it...

This screams VETIVER on me. After a couple minutes, I can smell the pomegranate and smoked ginger. And it's definitely smoked ginger as opposed to regular ginger. Love it....all these dark blends keep finding their way to me lately. I'm all over it, and it lasts for hours on me. I fell asleep wearing this and I even dreamed about vetiver. Also it reminds me of a scene from a movie: In Naked Lunch, when William Lee and another writer's wife (Judy Davis) are using a typewriter that types in Arabic, and they're high on a fictional drug that's like soft black resin in a little jar. They are writing an erotic scene, and the typewriter turns into an erotic fleshy creature that jumps on them while they make out, and flops around like a horny flounder. For some reason, The Great He-Goat reminds me of that scene. Maybe I'm turned on in a sick perverted way by the dark family of scents, this one in particular. It smells kind of dirty to me!

I really like this scent, and I thought I had already reviewed it a long time ago. My review probably sounds like most others....I smell a lemony floral with some coconut, and it has a soft, smokey feel to it. It does smell somewhat like cookies or candy, but the smoke and flowers add more complexity....still, it's light and subtle on my skin. Very sultry and kind of incense-y. I can also smell the vanilla and black musk just a little bit. After about an hour, the lemon flower has faded considerably, leaving a musky, smokey floral scent. It's kind of faint on my skin now and that's my one and only complaint about this scent. But really, maybe that's appropriate for this particular scent, especially since I'm a guy. I love smelling like this, and I honestly want a whole bottle of it. It's not exactly masculine, but I think in some situations I could wear it and pull it off. Even if I don't wear it out in public, I could see myself getting a bottle just to wear it at home, because it's just too yummy to miss.

I forgot to mention, Centzon Totochtin (it's in the Excolo section) strikes me as very dark and almost velvety: "Bittersweet Mexican cocoa with rum, red wine, and a scent redolent of sacrificial blood". It was a surprise hit for me.

This is a very full scent, ripe and almost juicy. Oh! I thought it had currant, then I just read the notes again. I guess I'm smelling a lot of the plum and coconut, musk and spices very much like Snake Oil, and vanilla which is reminiscent of both Snake Oil and Eat Me. It's not buttery like Eat Me, though. Just very fruity and spicy. It's a lovely scent! I don't know that I would wear this often*, but I do want to have it around just for when the mood strikes. It's very potent and I feel like I could dump the whole imp into a bottle, dilute it 1:1 with jojoba oil, and it would still be strong. I might do some experimenting. Much later on, the resins become noticeable as the other notes fade. I do wish the resins were stronger from the beginning, but really it's such a nice scent I will happily accept is as it is. *edit...I've changed my mind...I thought at first this was just too rich and fruity for me to wear in public. Then I wore it to lunch yesterday, and just loved it....I'll be hunting down a whole 5ml at some point, I think.

Heavy and thick, Sloth is very strong and lasts a long time. At first the vetiver is mixing with the myrrh and smells almost metallic to me. But after a while the heavy, sweet myrrh comes out on top. It's the same myrrh that I smell in Penitence. Even later, after more drying, Sloth reminds me a lot of Laudanum, which also has myrrh. Myrrh is so weird. People call this masculine, and I guess I could see that. People say that myrrh is bitter. But to me, this myrrh is heavy, sweet, and almost powdery. Sloth isn't something I would wear often, but I might keep it around just for when I'm in the mood. I do like the extended Laudanum-esque drying part of it. Lasts and lasts.....

What I mostly get from Dracul is very spicy orange blossom. Strangely, I smell a strong hint of cayenne pepper, which I guess could be the clove and cumin playing tricks on my nose. The rest of the notes give little brief hints of themselves, for the most part...the mint, fir, black musk, and tobacco...it's all there. Something about the scent is a little stale or dusty on me, a problem that I'm finding with more and more scents. In this case I feel like it's the tobacco that's causing the problem. It's not horrible, just not a scent that's working well with my skin. It doesn't change or morph much at all, except the spiciness fades a little and the sweetness of the orange blossom gets stronger with time. edit: Hmm, later on..like more than an hour later...all the notes finally come together into something that I do really like. The scent hasn't changed, really, it just finally decided to cooperate with my skin. It's still spicy orange-y with musk. I like it enough now to hold onto maybe, and try again at least once or twice. edit again: This is yet another scent that I've grown to really enjoy. I will be getting a whole bottle at some point. : )

Aizen-Myoo starts out like the bitterest sharpest thing I've smelled out of the lab. Kuzu must smell like grapefruit because this smells exactly like when you peel a grapefruit and the mist droplets come out of the peel....just a little bit *greener* though. It's a lively smell, but I'm not sure where or when I would want to smell like this. Later on this sharpness fades, and a more candy-like sweetness comes forward. There is something a little stale about it now, and I think that's the tea turning on me. I don't think I have a problem with cherry blossom, and that combined with the mikan (someone said that's a kind of orange) might be contributing the candy sweetness. Without the staleness that it makes on my skin, this would be nice and fresh, but maybe too sweet for me. And even later, the staleness or dustiness, whatever it is, does fade and it's more like a candy smell now. Interesting scent, not what I was expecting. It makes me think of the face Homer Simpson makes when he tastes the sourest candy in the world, and the whole bottom half of his face puckers up. I wish I could find a pic of that, because it sums up the first bitter stage of Aizen-Myoo perfectly.

Second-ing Typhon, adding Count Dracula and RM Renfield if they weren't already mentioned. Someone compared Renfield to a screaming disembodied head in the reviews.

To me, All Souls is pretty much how it's described, cake and sugary with incense. It's a drier cake smell, not as buttery as, say, Eat Me, which smells very rich, buttery, and somehow a bit deeper to my nose. All Souls is pretty balanced between the foody aspect and the incense, although later the incense comes out stronger. It's a sweeter, more floral incense than other bpal incense blends that I've tried. Not much wood in this, that I can detect. As for the currant, I think it may have blended with the incense notes because it did remind me of a floral and fruity incense smell. Pretty straightforward, All Souls is a lighter scent than I was expecting. It smells good, but there are other incense scents that are darker and more exciting to me (especially Midnight on the Midway). I'm glad I got to try it and I can see that it would be very appealing to some. Edit: Well what do you know, 2 years later, I'm wearing this again on Halloween night, and wow....it has really grown on me. It's the same scent as far as I can tell, I just grew to love it more. I want more than my one little decant now!

Typhon is very earthy and dark, as expected….lots of vetiver and patchouli. At first this seems like the most patchouli-centric bpal I’ve smelled so far. The patchouli has the same ‘motor oil’ feel that I get from brand new Snake Oil. That sounds bad but it's not...I just can't think of another way to describe it. After a few minutes I'm reminded of Mme. Moriarty even more than Snake Oil, I guess because of the patchouli and musk. The sandalwood swirls in and out of the mix in a beautiful way. Sometimes I kind of forget about sandalwood, but this scent really shows it off. This is a keeper, for sure… I think this would be great to wear on a date with someone who already knows me in an intimate way. Surely not a ‘first-date’ scent. And it’s a little too dark and sexy for a formal occasion. I have a feeling this will be the replacement for several other bpal scents for me….Schwarzer Mond, Lycaon, and Azathoth. Maybe even Iago. Typhon has the best qualities of all those, and might be my favorite of the bunch. And as mentioned in other reviews, this is going to age really well I think. I bet it will only smell better and better over time. I'm glad I followed the advice of my fellow forumites (Sarada and Nineveh especially!) and grabbed a bottle at the last minute. Thanks for enabling me!

Neo-Tokyo, maybe? Also Zombi....freshly turned, moist dirt with a capital D, and flowers...the dirt calms down after a while. Not really a city scent, but kind of humid and floral, like Demeter's Wet Garden (in my opinion), with more dirt...I could be way off base here.

Wolf Moon is deep and murky at first....seems aquatic to me, somehow, with pine. There is a sweet/tart fruitiness that reminds me a little bit of Bayou. Then after a while, the juniper blooms in a big way (and in this case I don't hate the juniper...I actually like it!). It's a complex blend that I really like. I couldn't 'find' some of the notes listed....amber and black musk are nowhere to be found on my skin, unless they are quietly supporting the other notes. All in all a wonderful scent, although it's kind of quiet and brooding on me, and I wish it had just a little more throw. This is a keeper, I think.

Orpheus is fresh and green smelling, just like lots of others said. There's something in it that reminds me a lot of a commercial perfume, maybe the lavender or benzoin, or maybe just the combination of notes. After a while some of the sharp pointy notes become more rounded out, and it's sweeter but still has that green feel to it. It reminds me of the Apothecary although I didn't do a side-by-side test of the two. I like it enough to keep the Imp around, maybe not enough to buy a bottle.

Thanatos!...I just put some on this morning. "Dry white sandalwood and soft Siamese benzoin over a lugubrious blend of myrrh, Moroccan rose, mastic, tomb moss and a thin whiff of Greek incense". The rose is pretty strong on me, but there is a little bit of sharp green note (the tomb moss?), sandalwood, and the incense. I don't know what mastic is. It's one of the few rose scents that I can wear...maybe the only one?!

Without reading, I wouldn't have guessed this had pine *or* earth notes, at first. For me it's sharp, green and herbal, with some eucalyptus or other herb, something almost ammonia-like which fades within a few minutes. There is a sweetness that I can't identify, and also something citrus-like. Then, around the 30 minute mark, the pine comes out. Wow! NOW I smell pine. The sweet and citrus are still there, too. Now it smells like how I imagine Yule to smell. This smells good. It wasn't what I was expecting, but that's not unusual. I was expecting something more like Zombi, I think. But I like this. Not sure that I would wear it often, but it might be nice to keep around to wear every once in a while.

Mmmm, this is just as good as I was hoping it would be! Starts out with a candy orange scent, with the patchouli starting to emerge. To me it's very much like the patchouli in Snake Oil. Great herbal/orange combination that stays pretty balanced throughout the drying part. The notes stay kind of separate which isn't a bad thing. I'm curious as to how this will age. I think citrus ages faster than other notes but as we know, Snake Oil ages wonderfully, and this reminds me somewhat of Snake Oil so we'll see.

Chaos Theory III Strange Attractors CLXVI (166) DARK. Smokey, herbal, spices, sweet cinders, maybe leather? The devil smiley is appropriate. On first try, I'll be honest...this was repellant to me. It smelled strongly of burnt rubber, tar, or pitch. I could tell there was a little bit of sweetness in there, and some herbal quality like eucalyptus or hyssop. However…I had to wash it off, the burning smell was making me feel queasy. I decided to put it away for a while, so I put it in a dark cabinet for a month or two. When I tried it again, it was much smoother, and closer to blackwifey’s review (although I haven’t smelled Medicine Show, Geek, or Herr Drosselmeyer so I don’t know how it compares to those). I’m smelling strong herbal, slightly burnt or smokey, a little mint or eucalyptus, or some other herb, possibly a touch of leather. There is some sweetness that I can’t identify….resin? Vanilla? Maybe vanilla. As it dries, it sweetens even more. It’s amazing how a little time in a cabinet settled this down to something I can handle. Still…my original two CT’s from the lab work much better for me. Edit: I think I should mention that I swapped this away (I think.....unless it's still hiding in my closet, somewhere!), because I just couldn't handle it after all. Just too acrid, it kind of gave me a headache after a while.

In the vial this is straight up dirt, very potent. Then on my skin the florals bloom and the moist mosses come out, and I'm in love. I would love to wear this to some outdoor party or event in the spring time. Honestly the rose is threatening to take over but it's stopping just short of overpowering the other notes. I hope it stays just like this. Reminds me a lot of my favorite Demeter combination, Wet Garden and Dirt.

Smells like gin, maybe a little something fruity as well, or maybe that's just juniper. I don't know....not doing much for me, really....I don't drink any more, and I wouldn't want to wear this as a scent. It reminds me of a Demeter scent, I guess because of the alcohol, and the lightness of it. Just not my thing.

Bat-Woman is a lovely, soft, whispering floral that smells good on my skin. At first I can smell the night blooming flowers and tartness (I think from the verbena) that remind me a lot of Bayou. Bat-Woman has more of a dry, almost dusty, sighing feel to it. I don't smell any lavender. After a while the florals back off and I think what I'm smelling is the grey amber. It's a very pretty scent...not sure I would wear this in public because it is somewhat feminine to me. I don't know, maybe I could pull it off.