forspecial_plate

First sniff from the bottle make me groan out loud and my eyes rolled back in my head...right away I knew that Schwarzer Mond was dark and sexy, something special. It had a very boozy feel to me out of the bottle.....complex. When I put it on the first thing I thought of was thick, black molasses with licorice or herbal notes slowly turning in the murk. I think it was just the scent as a whole making itself known assertively, I couldn't really pick out any individual notes. Then as it started to dry, the throw increased, and at this point I started to think maybe I didn't like this after all. It was SO dark and thick, and rich, that it was intimidating me and actually upset my stomach a little, although I was really hungry. The patchouli did come out for a while, and I also sensed that black licorice feel again. I would say this stage lasted about an hour, maybe less. Then the dark musk started broadcasting from me, reminding me a bit of Iago. This is where it more or less settled, with the sweet resins making themselves known but not overpowering the musk. It faded into a sweet, spicy resinous blend that my skin did suck up significantly....although as usual I might just have really dry skin today. After it faded in intensity I was reminded a few times of Voodoo. I wouldn't call this love at first sniff. 'Portentious' and 'regal', taken from previous reviews, really are good words for this. I know I want to wear it again, but it might be a blend for special occasions. Or special moods. A very challenging scent! edit: Second try, today, it's not overwhelming like it nearly was yesterday. Maybe yesterday I was over-sensitive because of empty stomach, or maybe I put too much on. Still liking it! final edit (sorry): I eventually decided that the final dry stage was too heavy with a bay rum type scent. My skin took it into cloying, cheap smelling men's cologne or after-shave territory. This may have improved with aging...but I decided to swap it away and give someone else a chance at it.

Schwarzer Mond

Last night I put on Ra from Stations of the Sun and for a while, it smelled a lot like the Pit and the Pendulum to me. Odd since the themes of the two are almost opposite... But I'm pretty sure they share a resin note or something.

I'm sorry you're having problems..I work in e.r. registration and I see that all the time. Makes me feel bad, seems like a rough problem to deal with. I don't have any suggestions besides maybe meditation or breath work. Best of luck to you though...

First impression: ...smells exactly like sassafrass bark. But I can tell there's a little bit more in the background. As it warms up the sassafrass backs off considerably, letting the other elements come forward. The root-beer feel from the sassafrass never disappears entirely, giving a foody feel to this. This is a good thing. Can't really pick out the nutmeg, but I think I'm getting the poppy and myrrh. It ends up smelling herbal, sweet, and smokey. Kind of an unusual combination but it works! I like it enough to hold onto the imp and use it again. edited to fix bizarre double post

This one is hard to pin down...mostly it reminds me of Dragon's Blood, although when I compared them side by side, they're pretty different. It is mostly sweet and floral but there is more going on here than meets the nose so to speak. I would say humid and tropical are good descriptive words here. For whatever reason, I don't get a 'green' feeling from this, more of a 'red' feeling. Maybe it's just because I'm associating it with Dragon's Blood. Oddly when I put my nose right up to my skin I can smell something almost like sulphur. And it does have a soapy aspect to me. It is a nice scent overall but I'm honestly not sure if I'll keep it. I will give it a couple more chances I think. edit: After an hour or two a lot of the sweetness has faded. I like it even more now, with some of the ozone creeping in. It seems to be getting earthier too. I will most likely keep the imp for a while but not seek a bottle.

Eek.....it's not often that a Bpal scent rubs me the wrong way...but when they do, they don't mess around! I think the linen note in White Rabbit might also be in Dirty. Both go just wrong on me. White Rabbit starts out smelling okay, but...I could smell the 'Dirty' linen right away. Long story short, White Rabbit turns into latex on me. More specifically....open a fresh condom (not the flavored kind...just a plain one ). That's the smell I'm getting. I can pick out the tea, ginger, and maybe honey. But it's all combining to make an unpleasant latex smell on me. Obviously I'm not meant to wear Beth's linen blends....this one will be swapped or given away!

St Germain seems very dry to me, if I'm using the word correctly. In fact it makes me thirsty. As far as notes, I think I'm getting mostly the mosses and amber. It has a savory herbal feel to me which maybe is the lavender, or just the whole thing together. It smells sun baked...that's the term that kept coming to mind. Am I the only one who is reminded strongly of Scarecrow? That one also made me want a glass of ice water, in the same way. Oh yeah and I almost forgot....when I first put it on, I smelled black musk in there for some reason...but that didn't last. Bottom line, just not something I feel like coming back to.

I have 2 imps of Dragon's Milk that are completely different. One is decanted and bright red in color, and smells very subtle, faint, in fact when I wear it it's 'barely there'. The other is a frimp fresh from the lab, sent very recently, pale orange in color, and much more potent in scent. Seems like the opposite of the aging effect...the newer one is much more powerful. *shrugs*

This starts out rather cloying on me, and too.....I know this is lame, but 'perfumey' is the most fitting word I can come up with. I think it's the combination of everything that's just too much for me. To its credit, it is very well blended as I can't pick out individual notes. And the violet isn't out of control as I feared it would be. Later, after an hour or two, it has mostly vanished (I know my skin is dry today), leaving behind......cake? What the hell? I think it's the amber and/or musk but it's undeniably smelling sugary and foody on me now. Not a lot of throw, it's a very close-to-the-skin vanilla cake-y smell. How strange. I might try this again just to see what other tricks it plays on me. But eventually I'll be swapping it most likely.

Myrrh sort of confuses me. I worked in a health food store where we had actual myrrh in a big jar, in the bulk herbs section. I like how that smells. Then we had myrrh essential oil, and I like that smell too, but it smelled sort of different. Then there is myrrh in Bpal which I have yet to really recognize on its own. I would love to get a hold of a Bpal myrrh single note just to educate my nose. : D ETA: I did a search on the Bpal site for myrrh, and out of the 35 results, I've only tried 5 of them. So I do need to try more different blends.....(not to mention there are probably a few with notes not listed that contain myrrh).

...and I read your review and added it to my wish list! : D

Kumiho starts out with a sparkly ginger and citrus scent, sweet and fresh smelling. Reminds me very much of the ginger in Sudha Segara, which is kind of sparkly and bubbly to my nose. The citrus vanishes within about 15 minutes, and then the whole thing starts to turn too sweet. Once again, I'm not sure I'm 'getting' the tea note, unless that's what the citrus was. I'm not giving up on Beth's ginger, I have high hopes for Two Monsters, Count Dracula, and Dr Seward. Kumiho just doesn't work for me, though. I think it would smell great on a lady and this will go into the 'for mom' pile.

I love citrus, and this starts out mostly citrus for me. At first it's all sweet orange and bergamot. If I concentrate I get a little bit of mint in there. It stays very citrus for a good while, like at least an hour. Then as it dries I start to pick up on the herbal aspect....verbena, thyme, maybe the lavender a little bit. Average throw and lasting power. Never did I smell any almond which is strange....maybe it just blended with or was overpowered by the citrus. I do like this, but not sure I like it enough to keep, with so many other Bpal oils that I like more. If I'm ever in the mood for a bright fresh citrus I'll turn to Calliope.

I bet Aureus ages really well too....I really need to pick up a 5ml of that! : )

Wow...on my second try I pretty much found a new favorite with The Scales of Deprivation. It seems to hit all my buttons in the right ways. All the notes contribute to the scent as a whole, and are beautifully balanced and blended in harmony. It's exactly the right combination of sweet and dry, resins and herbs...I just love it. It's complex but also sort of subdued, and makes me feel very sexy. The first thing I notice is the sweetness of the resins, which aren't TOO sweet, a problem I've had with resin scents lately. But not here. The herbs, lavender, and lemon peel float in the background, keeping it from becoming too sticky, adding a refreshing element. As it dries, it gains a savory quality, due to the sage I think. And the sandalwood is there all along. Sometimes sandalwood is too strong on me but here it is perfect. The first time I wore this the sandalwood was a little iffy...but the second time it worked really well for me. I hope it behaves! Definitely going on my 5ml bottle list.

Hmm...I don't see that anyone has mentioned The Scales of Deprivation yet. I just tried it a second time and I'm liking it a lot. "Thin, dark, and shadowed. A scent that offers no sustenance, comfort or satiety: lemon peel, white sage, frankincense, lavender fougere, sandalwood, vetiver and labdanum." If I remember correctly the first time I tried it, the sandalwood came out and took over on dry-down. Sandalwood is funny on me so it kind of turned me off. Right now I'm getting lots of resin from it, though. It's sexy and complex because I can pretty much pick out all or most of the notes. This is a good one! I just hope the sandalwood behaves this time....

Sweet and smokey, just as I had anticipated. Somehow I thought I would like it more though. It's not a bad smell. I smell lavender and the blackened sandalwood, mostly. I guess I'm picking up the nag champa too, because it smells pretty sweet to me. Something about the combination is just not doing it for me. Maybe I just don't like incense blends as much as I thought! I won't give up though.

At first Midnight Mass is pretty strong frankincense and myrrh. As it dries, I get flashes of 'lit' incense. Out of nowhere it smells like burning, lit incense, and then it goes back to basic frankincense and myrrh, and back and forth. It's the strangest thing. Also I think I smell just a little bit of cedar in it, but that comes and goes too. Still it's just a little bit more sweet than what I wanted. If it comes up in the Yule scents this year, I will probably pick some up. Otherwise I doubt I will seek an older bottle of it, unless the mood really strikes me.

Hmmm....this sounded like a fun scent. However, when I put it on I could barely smell anything at all. Warming up on my skin, it did put out a little bit of nice, fresh sweetness... but it's barely there at all. I have to put my nose right up to my wrist to smell it. Wonder what gives. It's possible my skin is just really dry today, so I may try this one more time, another day...or might just swap it! ETA: After a couple hours, the throw has increased, so it's detectable now...unless my nose just opened up or something. It's still so subtle as to be not worth it for me to hold onto though, I think.

I too am on a quest for the perfect incense/resin blend. So far I've found I like the drier ones better, like Aureus, and Djinn if you want to count that as smelling like incense (more people think of it as just straight up smoke and fire, based on reviews....). I do like Midnight Mass and Pit and the Pendulum, although both were a lot sweeter than what I was hoping for. Midnight Mass has the interesting feature of suddenly smelling 'lit' as it dries. This comes and goes. It's so weird. It's like....sweet and resinous, then boom, it's lit and burning incense, then back to sweet resins. Pretty neat, actually. I hope it's brought back in Yule scents this year. I had high hopes for Gaueko but it just didn't toot my horn unfortunately. Add me to the list of Caterpillar=jasmine with little or no incense, at least not until it dries a lot.

Dang...on me this is all floral (jasmine?). Where is all the good stuff everyone else is getting? I'd be happy for some earth and incense. Moss? Nope. Nothing and I mean nothing but sweet, deep flowers. Reminds me of jasmine with a hint of rose or some other flower. Don't get me wrong it smells good, just not my thing usually. This is better off with someone else.

whoa. Where's all the cedar coming from? Or is that just patchouli, tricking my nostrils? Mostly cedar, at first, with a little sweet resin in the background. There's also a lot of green in here, as it warms and dries....green, earthy, moist...kind of 'dank', but totally not in a bad way. It's a cool, dim forest with leaves underfoot turning to mulch....and sweet wood smoke in the air, from a distance. Sort of like what I really wanted from Black Forest, actually, without the dreaded juniper. The cedar and smoke are reminding me of Aureus. Hey...now I'm getting coconut too! I wonder if the copal is adding a sweet coconut feel to this. I really like this, it's kind of hard to pin down as far as describing it. I can definitely say it's turning sweeter as it dries. edit: I'm kind of dissatisfied with this review. I will think about it some more and maybe revise it...it's a nice scent and really reminds me of Aureus.

First Brimstone blasted me with eucalyptus. Then that disappeared...*poof*...and it became Djinn's twin. This makes me nervous. Djinn is my first bpal true love, and still my favorite of all bpal's oils. 'What if I like this more than Djinn?'. Worry. I mean, they are almost identical on me. However....I start to detect little differences. Where Djinn is fiery red/orange, Brimstone is more grey/green. And Brimstone is stronger. Actually it's getting stronger as it warms up...not fading yet (I've only had it on a half hour or so). As it dries, the eucalyptus is coming back. And I agree with the person who said there's a coldness here. Overall, I would say this just barely crosses the line and becomes too harsh for me. It has a very sinus-clearing quality. Somehow, even though Brimstone and Djinn are so alike, Djinn is more my speed.

Nefertiti is rich and sweet, but smooth and deep, too. At first I thought maybe there was some jasmine in here but maybe not (I guess that's iris). I think what I'm mostly getting is olibanum and myrrh, because it does smell sweet and resin-y. Which is a good thing. I was a little wary because sometimes sandalwood goes nuts on my skin. It can become overpowering and takes on a weird almost buttery feeling. But so far the sandalwood is behaving. This is a sexy scent!