LightLikeKnives

In the bottle, it smells like some kind of fruity alcohol, maybe like mead. On the skin, it's a dead ringer for mead. It wafts up around me for several hours, before going into a fruity musk phase, and then becomes a high-end soapy smell. Oya takes the best of several different kinds of scents and molds them together in a journey that is enjoyable at each step along the way. It's a keeper. (The description did nothing for me, which is a first.)

Tintagel is a fruity/musky/cinnamon/tobacco-vanilla kind of scent, anchored to a leather base. It is powerful, ancient, natural, and simply delicious. The only negative is that it lasts only 4 hours before becoming a skin scent -- but what a skin scent! RIP: 6 hours.

In the bottle, it smells like something sweet -- carmelized vanilla, maybe? On the skin it's a dead ringer for tapioca pudding, but it has a masculine spicy/sweat/arid undertow to it that doesn't fit. Occasionally it crosses over into that deplorable Scotchguard/musilege smell. Very sweet and foody. If the arid/spicy/sweaty vibe was stronger, I'd feel more comfortable with it, but it's still an interesting scent. Lasts 12+ hours.

It goes on as a menthol-orange scent, herbal, not exactly fresh (reminds me of the way Orange Crush tastes), with a little incense mixed in. Feels very headshop-y, very heavy. Slowly the heaviness fades away to an old lab scent, and then it's over. Lasts about three hours.

Dance of Death is a balmy, resiny, faintly incense kind of scent. It makes me think of the smell of Egypt; it is not nasty or musty -- it is ancient, warm, a little heady, and a little sorrowful. I think the main note here is petit grain, and it feels natural, wheat-like. There is a bit of the high-end cologne smell here, and about 6 hours in, it comes to the fore.

This is a keeper.

This is a cinnamony-rum, potpourri scent. It's fairly strong, but not really the whole 'spice market' thing that it's advertised as. After an hour, it becomes better blended, more integrated, softer, creamier, and well, dare I say it -- sexier. Then about hour five, it undergoes a slow dissipation as it turns vetiver, the arid kind of vetiver that suggests a desert. It's not bad, but it's not fantastic, either. I got ten hours out of it, with the last three as a skin scent.

Starts off with a powdery rose, shrubby kind of scent, and ends up as Freeze-pop orange mingled with uninspiring rose. Definitely not my thing.

It's mediciny at first, both in the bottle and upon the skin (great name for a song, BTW). Occasionally there are blasts of the medicine smell in the first few hours, but then it mellows out into an easygoing, sweet, somewhat mysterious clean aroma. There is a very faint odor of musk (fig?), and it feels friendlier than say, Aelopile. It's not bad, but the medicinal opening made me like it a little less.

I don't think I can add much to the BPL catalog description, except emphasis: it is exactly what a frigid-hearted, disdainful, rich spinster would wear. On my skin, at least, it is the quintessential old woman's perfume. It is heavy and close, with just the barest hint of the exotic. (Yes, I was sucked in by the description and the poem.)

Initially, the berry smell (blueberries? blackberries? both?) was very strong, and very heavy. That phase lasted for about six hours, and the other six were dominated by a fruity/musky smell. The second phase was ok, but it wasn't anything that I really cared to smell like. I must not have the right body chemistry for this, as it definitely wasn't swirling around me in a glorious way. It was more like I had fallen across an overripe patch of pokeberries and they had stained all my clothes.

In the bottle: Is that Old Spice I smell? Yup.

On the skin: It smells initially woodsy and piney, that disappears rapidly and leaves behind the nutty/overly sweet smell that smells very much like the original Old Spice. Yuck! Wearing this made me feel like I had aged 20 years. Eventually that smell faded away, leaving a faintly spicy, musky scent which wasn't that bad.

The onset of this is LOUD and on my skin, it smells like artificial, sugary candy. Yuck. After two hours, it mellows out to a sweeter psuedo-musk, although it has some teeth to it. It makes me feel strong and gregarious. The ending scent is a wonderful sweet-spicy-woodsy aroma that I positively love. However, I couldn't stand the onset.

Viole(n)t Overdose is what this should be named. The first four hours it smells like violets, violets, and violets. As others have noted, it's not a powdery kind of violet, but a fresh, earthen, kind of rain-sodden, pulled-from-the-earth kind of smell. After the four hour mark (that's one heck of a drydown period), it smells sweeter, faintly musky, and kind of soapy. I enjoyed this smell, but the loud onset was just too much for me.

My overall impression is one of honey, oak-paneled boardrooms, and hiking. When I put it on, it smells of honey (perhaps that is the black vanilla, though) and wood. It is a rich, close, complex kind of scent, but utterly masculine. It also summons up images of the outdoors.

The scent remains constant throughout its lifetime and it lasts and lasts -- at least 16 hours on my skin. As others have noted, it does project, but not offensively. Those around you will note that you are here, but they won't need to run for gas masks.

This is a keeper.

It's sweet and woodsy without being musky. I don't get the 'damp earth' smell that others have got, except as a part of the overall woodsiness. The sweetness is barely there at first, and nowhere as near as flowery as some other colognes (I'm thinking of Le Male in particular), but after the drydown it shows up more with a little tang of soapiness. It has a mature, muscular, expansive kind of feel, with a dash of refinement, yet it's not an olfactory assault. It lasts 12+ hours on me, and gets mad props for uniqueness. It doesn't smell like anything else out there. I'd class it as a woodsy marine.

Update:

I've tried other marines since writing this and Caliban has this weird heavy not-exactly-fresh note to it that I've found doesn't go well over time. I think part of my initial review was due to some lingering effects of the Antikytheria Mechanism; Caliban is just a little too marine for me, I'm afraid.