starbrow

Okay, here's the thing. I feel the notes, for once, do NOT adequately convey the tone of this perfume! Skin-warmed sandalwood, toasted pumpkin, gentle blend....er...well.... YES and no?? I would not describe Every Day is Halloween as gentle. To me, it is sharp, almost biting. It verges on the edge of that burning that most of the 2021 Weenies had for me, a burning quality I associate with the high alcohol content of commercial perfume sprays. But underneath that is an orange quality that is fueled by swirling leaves and the bite of crisp autumn air. It is spooky in a way that only fall can be. The sandalwood dances with fiery colors in a skeletal swirl. The pumpkin is a leering jack-o-lantern, spicy and evil, rather than the usual richly sweet pumpkin of the last ten years of BPAL, or the buttery pumpkin of the early years. There is no sweetness here. It's all menacing, all spooky, and I kind of love that. And the final reckoning: evocative as it is, I do want some more dark woodsy depth out of this blend, not just the high-pitched terror. Where I skin-tested originally (er, knee, my arms were full of other scents, DON'T JUDGE), I apparently got more skin musk depth than from my elbow, upon retesting. So I think I will try layering this with a patchouli/resinous/etc. blend for some more complexity during its first year of aging. I'm excited to get my full bottle of it and see where it goes.

The notes cannot fully encapsulate the magic of Cognac Stained Sheet Ghost. For instance, balsam tends to be a very scratchy note, cognac can go beautiful lace or cologney nightmare, and tumbleweeds are a huge ??? So how do they all come together? Clearly, magic. Vanilla-scented sheets mingle with an antique wooden wardrobe. Lacy cognac is dappling the air with strains of an old-fashioned victrola, sweetly esoteric and ghostly. You can almost hear the crackle of the needle on vinyl, the tension of a lovely waltz against a fuzzy, popping recording, in the pleasant scratch of the cognac. Meanwhile, the unpleasant scratch of perfumey balsam is nowhere to be found! I would compare the woods to somewhere between peru balsam (sweet, vanillic) and Himalayan cedarwood (mellow, woodsy, lightly spiced). As it sits on my skin, the throw of it continues to swell. It's almost an amp, but in a pleasant way. Many times amplification in perfume is the notes that we find UNpleasant when strong, so it's nice to find one that becomes pleasantly strong! I am very very happy that I can smell this one so intensely on me. It also gets the thumbs up from the other half . I think this is hands down the best of the 2021 Weenies and will be a cult favorite for years to come. Backup bottle worthy, especially if you enjoy the BPAL laces.

Two years of aging have done wonders for this naughty Tengu Demon. What used to be just a peppery red musk has developed in a decant size into something thickly musky and richly spiced, with a sheen of beautiful earthen smoke, as ambrette seed is wont to do. The black pepper keeps bringing dark pinpricks of zippiness into the landscape of red musk. (Somehow dark and bright both at the same time, like glittery black eyeshadow). Meanwhile the ambrette seed and smoke (which is gentle, not bbq) aged into a stronger haze that's between leather and Terebinth pine in my perception: naturally smoky and curling grey at the edges. I find there is a warmth and an earthiness to ambrette seed blends, and that quality has gotten stronger over time here, melding with sandalwood into a deep, profound base to the fragrance. That, for me, definitely elevates Tengu Demon past usual red musks blends and sets it apart as something truly special. Some may find the black pepper gives this scent a masculine quality. I find it more like a leather motorcycle jacket, sexy in different ways on a man and a woman. The rest of it would be enjoyed by the Smut crowd, I feel like! That's really the direction Tengu Demon Using His Nose as a Phallus is headed: aged Smut with black pepper and a mysterious shroud of smoke. So...gorgeousness.

WOW beautiful! Parts of this remind me of Horses (and The Grey Columns) with some toasted amber sandalwood accompanied by a fluffy marshmallow lavender (so pretty) and a kiss of something girly-pink (rosebud). It's not a smack of rose, and you might not even know it's in here unless you really look for it. Even lighter on the rose than The Disciples. The marshmallow/vanilla is so appealing, it gives a much needed lightness and floof to the sobriety of the Horses kind of blend. Right now, it wears pretty close to the skin, but I could see that changing in the future. It's also a blend I think you could wear either at work because of its low throw and appealing vanilla nature, or at home because it IS quite cozy and snuggly. I think this will age beautifully, and be a really lovely feminine but not overtly floral option. I am happy to add a last-minute bottle of this to my collection!

Recent Haute Macabres have not been wins for me but Shadow Self is almost there. Blindly smelling, I guessed plum blossom or sweet pea, a gentle purple floral backed by some kind of smokiness the way my favorite plums are. When I looked at the notes, it made sense. The smoked lavender is truly gorgeous. It totally transforms the lavender from the herbal punch that it usually is out of the gate, into something mysteriously sexy, like a 1920s silent film star, purple and smoky-eyed and alluring. I really wish she was allowed to be the star here. But instead, it's the double lotus that dominates for me. This blend is for lotus lovers! There is a ton of that sweet Asian floral, elevated beyond bubble-gum territory here, but so so so sweet. The effect is only enhanced by the myrrh, which backs up lotus like the perfect Gretchen Wieners to lotus's Regina George, a sweet and powdery resin. I smell too the same sandalwood that was used in some of the recent RPGs, so I went digging. Drow Yoga Instructor is indeed very much a cousin to Shadow Self, but wayyyy more powdery, to the point that I got "WHOA baby powder" comments when I walked in the room. So if you loved Drow and want something more in that purple vein but with more complexity and smokiness, Shadow Self is a great option. I like too how this blend winks at me with herbal twinkles, keeping it from being strictly a floral blend. It's a really nice balance of the two. I can smell the tea and the petals and the sprinklings of herbs, like some mad scientist's concoction of Mad Tea Party blends and Shungas and a witch's garden. Ultimately, I might have considered upsizing this one if the smoked lavender was more present, or if the lotus was more buried (gone?). I don't like powdery blends, even restrained ones like Shadow Self. I am fine letting this one pass me by, but also it is really beautiful and the perfect choice for anyone who enjoys a good lotus. This is a good one!

I am so not the world's biggest rose perfume fan, yet I have been enjoying the occasional rose in blends for the past, oh, sneaky few years or so. I am a huge black musk fan and will go for a good black pepper, so I was really hoping they would stand up to the rose. In this case, it is the rose show in a thickly perfumey kind of way. A quite mature rose, dark and shadowed, with some fallen petals, almost, er, rotting. The black pepper adds to its spiciness but the sharpness of those two notes is hyped up by whatever perfumery element is girding them. Unfortunately, that element is not black musk to my nose, since I do love me some black musk. It's not quite the burn of some of the recent Liliths and Weenies, thankfully, but it's strongly old-fashioned and a bit...90s perfume counter. I don't think this leans either masculine or feminine, in spite of that, considering that the girliness of the rose is pretty well balanced with the cologne-like black pepper, but it doesn't feel like me either way. I don't smell black musk at all. Please report for duty! This trio seems to be blended with the same kind of slant as the 2021 Liliths and Weenies. If you enjoyed a lot of that collection, and are looking for something that straddles rose and spice, masc and femme, I'd recommend Red Rose, Black Pepper, & Black Vegetal Musk. If that was not your era of BPAL, I think I'd skip this trio.

This review is coming from a huge vetiver fan - depending on the type - and an overall myrrh avoider. I had to give this duet a whirl with a decant to see if it was the kind of vetiver I love, because that could cover over a multitude of myrrhial sins. Alas, this is the very mild, pretty but inoffensive vetiver from, say, Azathoth and Sloth and Incantation (GCs) or even Tonka Bean Black Tea & Vetiver trio, which is lovely but does not have a strong vetiver presence. This is great for those who are not fans of the note, or who want to steer well clear of the ashtray kind of vetiver. However, I was hoping for the beautiful grassy, silvery, swoony vetiver that has been in some other trios (like the apple patchouli one), Bloodlust, Death adder, etc. That vetiver never makes an appearance here, alas. What does make an appearance right from the get-go is the white myrrh. What makes it white? It is definitely a pale kind of resin, leaning in almost an orris direction. I mean, myrrh is always powdery for me, and this is not the MOST powdery myrrh I've ever smelled, but it has a distinctly perfumey quality that reminds me of the 2021 Liliths and Weenies. Softer and less punchy, but still. Perfumey. Myrrh is by far the stronger presence in the duet. If you are a myrrh fan, this is a very pretty myrrh, and the vetiver that goes with it is extremely well-behaved. I'd recommend it. But not for me. Fingers crossed for more appearances of my beloved grassy vetiver soon!

RUN don't walk to this one if you are a Two Sheep Two Goat fan! The swoonworthy vetiver that permeates that infamously glorious Weenie from days of yore is here to STAY in Frozen Pulse and Heart of Fire. A complex, grassy vetiver that is earthy and rooted, but neither the typical dirt note nor grass note that many of the greener blends from the lab can have. It is a uniquely grassy *vetiver*, and there is nothing else quite like it. I had to put on some Two Sheep Two Goat along with it for comparison purposes, especially because like, CASHMERE WOOL are you kidding me? Frozen Pulse is noticeably sweeter - all that sweet amber, caramelization of the vetiver, and hazelnut cream - and leaning a bit into that foodier realm. There is nothing foodie about Two Sheep to me; it is all baby lambs, smoky-grassy, dark and swoony, and the vetiver and wool are so deeply married, there really is no untangling the two. In Frozen Pulse, the sweetness really infuses the cashmere wool part so that it is less organic I guess you could say, and more a lived-in sweater kind of wool, one that you've maybe been baking in, or spritzed some of your favorite gourmand perfume on. This wool is not still attached to a sheep! Swirled into the creamy sweet notes here, I can also smell the uniquely Christmasy chestnut that is part nutty and part sweaty in a really appealing way. I can't detect the cedar at all so far, in case that's a concern. There is also nothing gritty/ashy/harsh about the smoke or vetiver in this blend. The caramelized part in the notes worried me, since caramel and cream are both scary notes on my skin, but so far, the vetiver is what persists, for hours and hours, and it holds all those concerns well in check. This does not travel into Zoe and the Goat territory of caramelization, but it is a slight glance in that direction. Whenever I sniff the patch of arm that has Two Sheep Two Goat, I rather wish that Frozen Pulse had a *little* less sweetness so that the cashmere wool would be more present and earthy the way it is in the Weenie. But that is a small quibble. This is the vetiver we've been dreaming of for years, my friends. Frozen Pulse, make my heart beat fast.

Lemony lavender is very accurate, and the cardamom is poppin'. The vanilla is nice, but cardamom is not kind to me. I'm not sad to pass this little tester bottle along.

Straight up ashtray. Maybe a flick of apple potpourri that someone set out to cover up the scent of Straight Up Ashtray. But omg CRINGE. nope.

Updated review: I bought a bottle! This is one of the 2021 Weenies that underwent a dramatic transformation in just a few short months of aging. At first, it was so sharp and burning that I could smell nothing else. I think now that that was the smoked honey, since honey can already be sharp and the smokiness of it was a burning, stinging kind of edge. Given a few months, this has lost some of its initial harshness, although it still goes on with a big smoky blast of goopy sweetness, corrupted by a dark brooding vetiver. The vetiver is almost the peanut-buttery one, except it's been singed and rye-toasted, which smells a lot like my Haitian Vetiver decant, so I feel safe in saying this is a big Haitian Vetiver blend. I get the pseudo-rubber-tire-store smell of the opoponax too now. It's all a really thick, dark, almost menacing mood. Very dense, smoky, and mysterious. I feel like Heavy as Honeyed Pulses Beat still has a ways to go in aging. I think it will be a lot like Endless Corridors, where the vetiver and dark smoked resins will continue to evolve each year and make it a different beast every time you open the bottle. That's the fun of the journey. You have no idea where you will end up. I'm here for the ride. I would wear this while: embracing my inner darkness.

This is absolutely that buttery pumpkin note I've come to associate with early-era BPAL a la Jack. There is something very Publix sugar cookie about it too. Not BPAL Sugar Cookie, but actual deli-style sugar cookie. I feel like if you want a true sugar cookie kind of scent with a whiff of buttery pumpkin spice, Mouse's Long and Sad Pumpkin would be a great choice! It's delicious but also I think I have enough Buttery Pumpkin to last me a lifetime.

Oh, this is really delightful! The other Sugar Plum 2021s that I've tried have all been extremely sweet, like a shot of plum pixie stix. Sugar Plum Golden Priapus, however, is far more balanced towards its base GC scent. There is something girly and flirtatious here, but I only know it as sugar plum because I've been smelling it in other scents. In this form, it is a demure sweetness by comparison, although if you haven't smelled the other Sugar Plums, I'm sure this one will smell plenty sweet. I think it is also the least plummy, yet the most enjoyable of the series because it doesn't thwack you across the face with plum candy. The vanilla of the original Golden Priapus is here but not as richly developed (yet?). Amber for sure, but not powdery, just subtle and golden. The resins of the woods too are more "young" smelling than my aged imp of GP, but lovely and subtle, sleekly unisex for a beautiful balance.. Overall, to me Sugar Plum Golden Priapus smells alluringly feminine in a cheeky but not blatantly perfumey way. I am rather charmed. I have been slathering it for a few days, wearing down my imp. Bottle-worthy? The one quibble I have is that the throw is low and the weartime is even lower. I am hoping that aging develops this one's staying power and overall power. I would like much more of it. Yum!

Wow, that Sugar Plum note is KICKIN. If you're curious what it's like, it is sweet sweet sweet with a dollop of fruit, in almost a fruit candy kind of way, like a plum-flavored fruit rollup. So. Freakin. Sweet. For my taste, I like more depth to my plum, so the Sugar Plum is currently a little unbalanced, so fresh in all these blends, that it really dominates and comes off as a very young, very sugary kind of scent. Underneath, a sweet patchouli is present, and it's very comforting and warm, a familiar twinge of herbal depth. The black coconut is not distressingly suntanny. Just as in regular Goblin, it does have some gnarl to it, which makes it bearable for me, a survivor of too many Florida summers. I don't smell benzoin really much at all, a mere dab of poofy bandaid. (I know, that doesn't sound great. It's just a dab.) But I really would like Goblin to make a bigger appearance here, to stand up to the Sugar Plum and be a sweetly dancing Goblin in the Nutcracker. Alas, I definitely won't be upgrading my decant to a fullsize bottle unless the sugar plum calms itself in the next few months, because I could get the same effect by layering just about any of the Sugar Plums over regular Goblin. I am keeping my bottle of Sugar Plum Snake Oil, so that will do me just fine.

Does this sound scary? YES. But sometimes we need to be a little scared, especially when we play with spirits. To no one's surprise, this is a bold and fiercely visceral scent. The red musk and its fiery cousin, coppery clove, are not here to play. They are RED HOT, a deliciously spicy-sweet duo that truly does thump and pulse like a heartbeat at the core of the blend. I love that I can smell the clove that winds all through it, like a warm gothy embrace. I'm also getting something a little...red fruity. More on that later. The coldness of the eucalyptus and white mint are a powerful shock in contrast to the fire of the first two notes. I think eucalyptus makes most of us think of a strong mentholic essential oil, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a player here. Somehow, though, it's in balance, like a Frost Giant standing up to an Asguardian god. The white mint is a beautiful note I recognize from other BPAL releases like Left Ventricle, and it is here to bring a crushed-herb coolness to the blend. I don't know what davana smells like, but a quick search brings up suggestions of an herb with hints of tea and fruit, and that is exactly what I get in the drydown; some kind of dark not-sweet berry and a bit of tannins. Shocking Affair at a Seance is so thoroughly BPAL, I am shaken because I am reminded of BPAL so thoroughly and yet of no one single scent in particular. I think it's the clovey red musk that is making me so nostalgic, combined with the herbaceous notes that usually wouldn't be found in a traditional perfume but are more essential oil in nature. I love that combination, and will be seeking out more of this than just my decant.

This is SO WEIRD and I'm glad I got a decant because finally I know what the nauseating note of Please Scream Inside Your Heart was. Fryer grease! Deep Fried Gingerbread is all deep-fryer grease and raw sugared dough and maybe a hint of gingerbread spice but really it's all about that grease. It's kind of amazing how dead-on the note is. Now that I recognize it, it's so obvious. I have smelled that hundreds of times after cooking. This is a sweetened version of it, from frying up dough with sugar and giving it that magical combination of sugar and fat. If you dig it, you will probably need this scent. If, like me, it made you queasy from the thought of perhaps throwing up this sugary mess on the Tilt-A-Whirl, it probably is a no-go in its gingerbread iteration as well. A few hours later, the gingerbread smell is quite pleasant. Fortunately, I have plenty in my collection that leave this kind of comforting gingerbread waft without Eau de Deep Fryer for the first few hours. EEP!

Straight up campfire. If the Lab's campfire/hearth/bonfire notes work for you, this might be your jam. It's basically single note campfire. There's some burnt...something in the middle of the fire, but do you really want to go sticking your fingers in there to determine if it used to be gingerbread? No you do not. Best to leave that charred carcass alone, and accept that it's just you and the fire. This did not work for me, and I don't know why I expected it to. If you're worried about it being too foodie, don't. Just get it for the campfire and sit by its glowing flames to your heart's content. I will avoid this note in the future, because it gives me headaches and is way too ferociously BBQ for my liking, but if you are looking for a strong campfire/bonfire, look no further, GIngerbread Campfire is here for you.

An unexpected favorite from the Yule 2021 collection. There is no hiding the leather in this blend; it boldly marches, authentic and strapping but also lived-in. The oak panels immediately make their presence known too, but where I find most oak heavy and oppressive, this interpretation is chilled, indeed ghostly. It is surprisingly agreeable. The poppy tar is the third ghost dancing in this blend. Tar is right; it is just short of a little ashy, but for me that leaves it on the side of wearable rather than heading in a perfumey commercial direction the way several of the Weenie poppies. This opium is thick, dark, pitchy. It's goth af, and I'm here for it. In quietly grounding roles are patchouli (a bit earthy, but not truly filthy) and oud (which honestly I can't isolate in this blend, so it's not a very indolic oud if that ever is a problem for you). There's a shadowed quality to the resulting blend of dark and brooding notes, with the perfect twang of hypnotic opium to offer counterpoint. I don't know where the chilly quality is coming from but it's fascinating. I keep coming back for more and more sniffs. This is not just a leather bomb of a scent; there's complexity, there's a story. This is a mill with many ghosts and they each have a tale to tell. In spite of leather and oak historically being two difficult notes for me to wear, I am going to acquire a full size bottle of this in my next lab order. The Haunted Mill might be my favorite BPAL leather of all time, and I'm kind of shook!

Blindly smelling, I would have guessed Gingerbread Brown Sugar Snake Oil! It's a darker interpretation of cookie than a traditional white sugar cookie, with zingier spices and a brown sugar element that doesn't quite go into maple/caramel territory for me (thank goodness). The zingy spice I smell is reading as ginger to my nose, and harmonizing beautifully with the familiar Snake Oil spices. It turns even more recognizably gingerbread-dry-mix as it dries down. There may be a dash of saffron or cardamom in there too, but they are not prominent in the blend, just adding some depth. I'm enjoying the vanilla, even if it is not quite Snake Oil's vanilla. At the moment, this is good but doesn't smell fully developed yet. This is more evident in the longterm drydown, when things go a little flat, yet I can still see the beginnings of a beautiful patchouli peeking through. I am planning on holding onto my bottle for a good long while yet and seeing where this one goes.

Wow. WOW. This was a whim of a decant, but it has knocked my socks off. Old-fashioned candy store is such a great description for Marshmallows, Gumdrops, & Peppermint Canes's overall vibe right out of the gate. All sorts of things you would smell from a shop in the 1880s. This is not a modern kind of sugary candy store, oh no. This takes it way back to a more sober, less corn syrupy time. The notes that swirl high in this atmospheric melange are an effervescent mint, the cinnamon and clove of the spices, and a floofy marshmallow that I recognize from Marshmallow & Black Plum duet, my favorite scent from 2021. This marshmallow is really special. It has a sweetness that originates in mallow root rather than in sugar crystals, which gives it that extra POOF on the skin instead of going to a syrupy place. It is exquisitely balanced by the spices, which harmonize on a dark wavelength that is reading super old-timey to me. Like back in the day when they would put anise and cinnamon and different spices in candies and you would scoop them out from a glass jar with a scoop and even the sweetest candies weren't very. In case you're scared of the anise, I think here it is very subdued compared with some other blends, but I can still pick it up, so it is present and accounted for, just not a screamer! I smell more cinnamon and clove, with that beguiling drop of anise to add a bit of sass. I'm not a peppermint-in-perfume fan, but here it adds to the atmosphere perfectly; peppermint candies belong in this spicy, old-fashioned shop. Gumdrops is the least apparent note, just a hint of sweet gummy fruitiness sprinkled in. (Like a more spicy Marshmallow & Black Plum. Delicious!) I didn't even expect to really dig this blend, but holy cow, I've been wearing it all the time ever since I got it. It's got this weird wonderful cozy vibe that is inexplicably comforting. I am absolutely grabbing a full bottle of Marshmallows, Gumdrops, & Peppermint Canes as a totally unique scent in my collection.

I was VERY excited to smell A Chocolate Cat and grabbed a decant. Were there some scary notes listed? Absolutely! But I started hearing amazing things about it, and my hopes lifted. The honeyed chocolate component is powerful and punchy. What this translates to for me is a bright, almost floral-sweet tang of honey through a sea of gooey semi-sweet chocolate. The toastedness of the amber almost reads as hazelnut to me, and I do get a drizzle of caramel too, like those brownies that have caramel in them. What breaks my heart is that this gorgeous ten-year-aged vetiver is in THIS scent. Because it is reading as my death combo: dirty chocolate. Chocolate that has rolled around in the dirt. Not just a chocolate bar either, but gooey melted chocolate that now has a layer of dirt encrusted onto it that can never be separated from it. Dirty musky chocolate is just a combo I don't enjoy, and that is exactly what is here. The vetiver is indeed the warm, grassy-dirty vetiver from Two Sheep and Two Goats kind of fame. I want to see it in more blends, because it is absolutely gorgeous. But oh, it just doesn't work for me in this one. Feedback from others when I wore it was that it is a very "strong" chocolate. That's that punchiness I was talking about earlier. It's not a milky-sweet one like Bliss, with a big throw. It's a big-old HIT of dirty, musky chocolate that goes even more caramel on my skin the longer it dries down. Unfortunately, it's not an upgrade for me, but for those who enjoy scents like Jólabókaflóðið, Haul on the Bowline, Night, and other chocolate/caramel/earthy blends, this might be your jam!

Blood: Essence of dragon's blood resin, thickened with myrrh and cherry, with a trickle of clove. Chimera: cinnamon, thickened by myrrh, honeysuckle, and copal. Shanghai: The crisp, clean scent of green tea touched with lemon verbena and honeysuckle. A double myrrh, double honeysuckle scent WHOA! Who would think to put two spicy-floral resins like Blood and Chimera with Shanghai? The Lab, that's who . The amazing thing is how perfectly the green tea and verbena melt into the warm resins of myrrh and copal and the heat of cinnamon and clove for this beautiful convergence of warm and cool. It reminds me of a spice and tea exchange shop in a wooden cabin in the mountains. I'm transported to a place that I want to linger in for hours. For me, the spices are so well balanced, neither overpowering nor getting lost in the presence of the other elements. The florals are less apparent here than in either Blood or Shanghai - I don't really get them much in Chimera - with the honeysuckle like a little droplet of honey in Shanghai's tea and the dragon's blood so much less prevalent (thank goodness) than in Blood. I can't smell the cherry the way i can in Blood. And traditionally I don't get along super well with myrrh as a primary resin, but it is soothing here, neither powdery nor bubblegummy, just gently sweet and complex in harmony with the richer copal wood. Shangoochi is pretty magical, I'm not going to lie. Ever since I got the decant, I've been slathering it a lot because of its huge comfort factor. I'm an enthusiastic Chimera fan and a moderate Shanghai fan, and while Shangoochi is a different beast than either of them, it's truly delicious and bottle-worthy. I may like it even better than Chimera! Shangoochi made my Top 10 of 2021 list. If your skin does well with cinnamon and clove - if you liked the duet Cinnamon & Clove especially - and you like tea scents, and you like that feeling you get when you step into an Appalachian shop in a log cabin - I realize this is a very specific list of criteria, but if one or more applies, I can highly recommend this Blap!

Out of the gate, LEATHER. It's a strong furniture leather that's soaked up the pipe tobacco smoke of many a debauched meeting. (I totally agree with doomsday_disco that it's a cherry pipe tobacco, because when I was sniffing, I started wondering if any of the three blends had fruit in it, thanks to the distinctly fruity smell). Right along side the leather is WHITE TEA liberally sprinkled with florals. It's a pretty amazing sort of Sinner and Saint kind of dichotomy, with the leather/tobacco/musk being really naughty and dirty, and the white tea and dainty bouquet of carnation and rose VERY innocent and young. Missing in action for me is the Snake Oil. I'm sure Snekhellden needs time to age in order for the Snake Oil to compete with the other two blends, but right now from a fresh decant, I'm getting hardly any, even hours later. The leather is still kicking, the white tea has calmed to a dull roar, florals are still sprinkled, but Snake Oil has yet to join the party. I'm amazed at how loudly Maiden speaks here, given the small amount of it compared with the much more "hefty" Hellfire. I put on Hellfire by itself to compare it, and Snekhellden is strangely much louder with the leather and also brighter and punchier thanks to the white tea and florals, whereas Hellfire alone has kind of a cozy by-the-fire-being-naughty vibe to it. I am probably not going to full size a bottle of this yet, but if the proportions change in my decant before Yules come down, I could definitely change my mind!

Satyr is one of my favorite GCs, so the Sugar Cookie variation JUMPED headfirst into my cart when the Box o Cookies drop happened. I could not be more thrilled! I feel like it's important to talk about Satyr, whose official description is very vague ( A ferociously masculine scent: sexual, vigorous, and truly wild.) but whose Gingerbread Satyr variation is much more descriptive notewise ( red musk, brown musk, civet and ambergris accord, Ceylon cinnamon, black cedar, black moss, and pine tar.) Personally, I find Satyr is hugely sexy in a unisex way, it all depends on your skin chemistry! Sugar Cookie Satyr is all the rich red and brown (Siberian?) musk that you know and love about Satyr, the gorgeous Ceylon cinnamon, the woody feral depth, plus a spicy cookie layer on type that is both sweet and chewy. The two are a perfect complement. For those who missed out on Gingerbread Satyr, this is very much in that same vein, just without the ginger. Otherwise, it has all the spices and the rich sweet cookie "texture" to it. YUM. As this dries down, the sweetness melds into the spices in a very Snake Oily kind of way. Also in a (whispers) Storyville kind of way. Like this is classic BPAL spices-meets-vanillas-but-make-it-sexy. It is not too cinnamony for me, but I have a high cinnamon tolerance threshold, and Ceylon is my favorite, as it's earthy and grounded rather than super fiery. I think if you love Satyr and you can tolerate some sweetness, this is a no-brainer blend. Also if you like Snake Oil, it's worth a try for sure!

I finally love my aged Cathedral bottle, after years of finding the GC scent offputting. Now, I find the Sugar Cookie variant offputting. This is probably a personal thing, it's just reading strange in like a. Cthonic way. Like this gives me the same unsettled feeling as smelling Magnificent Dreams of Cthulu in Love. Perhaps that is intentional, as sneaking sugar cookies in a cathedral should make you feel a little unsettled and sacrilegious. In any case, I'm not really getting a sweet cookie note from Sugar Cookie Cathedral. Nor am I getting the incense and old wooden church pews of Cathedral. Blindly smelling, I might have guessed actually at some animalic leather combined with wood polish and dust. It's atmospheric but in a funky attic way to me. It's not very sweet at all to me! A big surprise after Sugar Cookies and a Popcorn Garland was a huge sugar bomb. I would like to smell this along with fresh Cathedral, because to me, it's nothing like aged Cathedral, and nothing like aged Sugar Cookie. It didn't work out for me, but I think it's definitely worth trying to see if that atmospheric combo works for you if it sounds interesting.