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An oversimplification would be to say Hailstorm = Geek (original) + Dorian, but that’s not enough praise for just how seamless and perfect this scent wears on skin. The duration of Hailstorm reads as soft brown oak wood with its natural vanilla notes buttressed with a subdued woodsy sweetness that is appointed with candied tobacco leaf, golden apple tea and a wood polish halo. The grand sum of this perfume astounds me. It’s the greatest discovery of my perfume hobby, of any brand from mainstream to niche to indie. When I wear it out and about in my daily life I feel like the best version of myself. I've gotten all kinds of unsolicited remarks and compliments on it. It wears like magic in the air. This is the greatest BPAL I've come across. So perfectly sophisticated and refined. I’ve done side-by-sides with this vs so many other BPALs over the last months, including Geek, and it kills me how Hailstorm soars above everything else I test it against. The more I wear this, the more I fall in love with it and stand in awe of how perfect a scent it is. 5/5

This is gonna go down as one of the lab's best scents ever imo. It's one of the most perfect BPAL scent I've come across. It's huge, moody, harmonious, dark, sweet, musky, evokes all kinds of imagery and allure. It smells like a mix of Marianne, Snake Charmer and MME Moriarty (edit: and Schwarzer Mond). Leans a bit feminine at the start but dries down to something legendary. I'll never forgive myself for only ordering one bottle. Edit the following morning: I also agree with those saying this also has a Schwarzer Mond cola vibe. If you have a chance to buy a bottle of this, do not hesitate. It's absolutely divine. I really hope the Lab recorded the formula for this mistake in hopes it can be reproduced in the future. It'd be a shame if such a glorious scent was confined to such a limited offering. And I agree with those who say this is the type of blend that will age like a champion.

I agree, this one smells mostly like soap to me, which isn't what I expected given the notes list. I wondered if maybe I'd received a mislabelled bottle but it looks like other people are picking up the soapiness as well. I don't get leather, tobacco, sandalwood, incense or ambrette seed (a lovely warm musky note, one of my favorites in perfumery). All I smell is soap. It's not a bad scent per se, and I actually have a soft spot for soapy fragrances so this ends up working for me in a roundabout kind of way.

I have always loved Hunger. It smells like the most BPAL-y bpal scent in existence. It's rich, sweet, syrupy, floral, heady, and super evocative and alive, almost like the scent itself has a pulse to it. The smell is a potent & rich syrupy orange liqueur made creamy with a deep vanilla note that, fortunately, doesn't make the scent smell too sweet. The orange burns off after 30 min leaving this incredible playdough/amber/cola/skin scent which I find very sexy, and it lasts and lasts going well into the next morning. I can't bury my nose deep enough in this one. I wouldn't change a thing about it. One of the most intriguing scents in the GC.

“Many things -- such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly -- are done worst when we try hardest to do them.” This oil is quite addictive. I'm slightly obsessed. It's funny, I never cared much for the Dragon's Blood scents from BPAL but was frimped Dragon's Milk in a recent order and fell in love with it. There's a rough/sharp opening to it, but that fades and 15 minutes later it's like a creamy marshmallow Dragon's Blood that smells like pink and red notes swirling through milky white twirls of sweet creamy ambrosia. I've been wearing it to sleep the last couple of weeks and waking up in the morning is heaven with the smell in my bedroom. TKO seems like a sister scent to Dragon's Milk, just replace Dragon Milk's pink and red with TKO's rich pastel purples of all shades swirling through those same soft milky sweet curls. The opening shares a similar difficult opening too. TKO starts with a fresh lavender note right front and center, and lavender smells great at its heart and base but the top notes of lavender oil smell heavily herbal, like a cacophony of terpene heavy astringent notes that are none too pleasant. But once that initial blast subsides and those volatile top notes dissipate, you get hours upon hours of sweet coumarin-rich tonka hugging up on that gigantic soft pillowy lavender note. It's never too sweet, perfectly balanced. A nice big soft and cozy lavender marshmallow, a very addictive scent. A total companion scent to Dragon's Milk in my book.

After years of alternating through Dorian, Jareth and Theo, I find myself most likely to reach for Theo these days. An oversimplification would be to refer to Theo as Summertime Dorian, or rather, Dorian strolling through a garden in the golden hour while enjoying an effervescent gin and tonic with lemon. There's even a faint trace of soapy florals hidden in the mix which lends a certain freshness. The whole affair eventually fades to a sweet creamy musk that'll lure even the most fragrance-phobic person in for a closer sniff. Masterpiece material from the lab.

V may not be the most attention-grabbing scent, but it is utterly perfected in the smooth, seamless and effortless style in which it wears on skin. The notes list (Black leather, red sandalwood, orris root, tobacco absolute, oakmoss, and sweet patchouli) is of no consequence when analyzing a fragrance like this because V is anything but the mere sum of its parts. If you insist I address the notes, I would say the only one I find completely absent is the black leather note. However, as that note typically comes across as harsh, chemical and synthetic, its absence here is most welcomed. Unlike the heavy (some here refer to as 'chewy') notes that can bog a scent down or relegate its suitability to only very specific occasions, V is allowed to breathe without ever feeling fleeting, yet maintaining a weightiness that never veers toward excessive. V is an incredibly smooth and balanced dark fragrance, to me it leans toward the masculine side of things as there is, hanging deep in the background, a classic gentlemen's cologne vibe going on - and though it is understated, that same understated approach lends an elegance and ease that makes wearing this one such a pleasure. V feels like a suit and tie fragrance with character, begging for an autumn afternoon with a nice scarf, fitted with a slight sweetness to prevent the fragrance from ever feeling too dusty or dry. It comes across as smart, clever even. V feels like the comforting way a Ferrari engine starts up and that smooth, satisfying bass-y hum that sounds like what I'd imagine a fluffy 100ft mountain of black velvet purring through an ASMR microphone would sound like. Totally satisfying right down to the marrow. While a scent like this could easily cross over into a hamfisted caricature of a moody/melancholic Victorian cologne, V benefits from coloring within the lines and staying in its lane. The result is, to my nose, a kind of dark yet dapperly woody/mossy cologne with a perfect balance of smolder and sweet. Nothing edgy or shocking, and perhaps even possibly a bit safe, but truly superb nonetheless.

I've been wearing this one a lot lately and figured I should say some things about it. This is one of those unique oils that truly smells like nothing else I've come across, bpal or niche in general. A carefully crafted treasure where honey and benzoin sweeten a sawdust cedar with barbershop musk and baby powder. It's a rich, thick, deep golden colored oil that goes on sticky like real honey itself. In many ways it doesn't smell like an intentional perfume/fragrance at all, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone were to smell this in passing and think it was a unique smell of place-or-time and not a personal fragrance. It's definitely an 'outside the box' scent and rather abstract smelling. Sometimes it smells like a simple but perfectly crafted combination of 4 or 5 notes, yet at other times it seems to have an unspeakable complexity to it. To me, this is ultimately a dark honey musk fragrance - like an avantgarde film noir version of Sed Non Satiata (which would be a hypersaturated modern crime/romance). The Cat also wins the award for longest lasting bpal I've tried. Not sure if it's due to the viscous nature of the oil itself or the ingredients, or both, but this stuff lasts and lasts and lasts. A must try.

One of the most beloved men's fragrances that straddles the mainstream/niche line would be Thierry Mugler's Pure Havane, a cherry and vanilla cigar leaf fragrance that is virtually impossible not to like. Perversion, which actually came out seven years before Pure Havane, treads eerily similar ground but with a more robust character. After an hour, the rum soaked cherry-gummyworm loosens its grip and allows the warmth of pipe tobacco and honeyed tonka bean to steal the show. Superb projection and longevity carry this phase of the scent on and on, which is all you could really ask for. The tobacco note alone is something everyone should experience for themselves. 5/5

Vanilla, leather and herbs create a faux-gourmand tinted fougere that tops my alltime favorite BPAL list and has remained at that #1 position for nearly a decade now. TB&COC is a rich, sweet and velvety smooth scent that is about as perfect as it gets in terms of seamless blending. My favorite BPAL scents are those that are more than merely the sum of its notes, and while the notes list for this one may look simple, the fragrance itself is full bodied and complex while seemingly dabbling its foot in every category: gourmand, fougere, floral, woodsy, spicy and musky. There's a lot to explore here. Looking through reviews of this one, I'd be remiss in not addressing that this scent has a quality that is very much a love-it-or-hate-it quality, and that would be TB&COC has a prominent note of talcum powder, a lavender/powder barbershop scent that is beloved by some and seen as dated or 'old man' by others. Personally I find the way it's presented here to be fascinating, and often I consider this scent a BPAL bastardization of a classic men's barbershop scent. It is definitely a manly scent but also friendly and comforting - not menacing or nocturnal as many other BPAL masculine scents come across as. If you're looking for a nice twist on a classic scent, this will hit the spot. It's my #1 compliment getter, my go-to date scent, and a scent so comfortable that some nights I'll find myself putting it on right before bed. Usually I fanatically and relentlessly wear a scent until my interest wanes but TB&COC is immune to that. It's too good to tire of and I'm fairly certain that the more I wear it, the more I love it. If Dorian is a dandy scent, TB&COC is a dapperly one, leaving me feeling like a sharp witted Dillinger-esque gangster in a pinstripe suit. An impressive take on a classic theme.

With the recent passing of Justice Scalia, I found it fitting to pull out my bottle of this one and give it yet another wearing. If ever there were a "Macabre Powerhouse" perfume category, Looming Spectre of Inutterable Horror would dominate the hierarchy. From the moment I smelled this perfume I found something about it to be borderline creepy yet simultaneously comforting, scorched medicinal clove seeping into an old and eerie study rife with dusty furniture rich in varnish and aged leather. The effect is sinister, juxtaposed only by a rich vanilla - never cloying - which perfectly anchors this beast and tempers the bitter astringency. A previous reviewer referred to this one as "one of those aggressive, dark bpal blends" and another called it "dark, mad and brooding" while multiple people have used the word "bitter" to describe it. None of these remarks are inaccurate. This is not a play-nice masculine fragrance. It oozes a particular type of seriousness in its ability to smell black and grey and very unforgiving. 5/5