Zmey Gorynych

[myth]

A robust, lewd, and powerful blend of daemonorops resin, red musk, amber incense, galbanum, frankincense, and creaking leather that has dusted with gold and limned with tunda frost.

This starts out with a blast of cold pine... that must be the "tundra frost." I love pine and piney-cold blends, so this makes me happy, and explains why I added a second bottle to my order at the last minute tonight. It stays that way for a little while, then turns sweeter. I can't say what this might be... a combo of the amber incense and red musk, perhaps? I like this, too. Sadly, it doesn't stay like this very long, and is now all dragon's blood, all the time. I am not getting leather, resins, incense, whatever. Just the dragon's blood. I knew with it being the first note it would be strong, but I wish it wasn't amping over everything else. Dragon's blood is always very sickly-sour on me.

It is that time of the month, so I'm going to let this rest a bit and try it again later. I refuse to believe anything with red musk, amber incense, and leather—despite dragon's blood which is admittedly not my friend—will not smell amazing on me. It has to. Dammit. Edited September 2, 2012 by myth

[Viridian]

This is nothing I would have ever picked out for myself had I not smelled it - I thought it would be way too masculine on me, and red musk doesn't always overwhelm me with goodness. But I skin-tested and was very pleasantly surprised.

 

My first impression, wet, without knowing any of the notes at all, was mint. Maybe even chocolate mint - there's something about the piney coldness that just screams minty to me even though it's not the mint of lick it or any of the other mint blends I have. The mint fades after a little while into this warm, snuggly, sweet scent - amber and dragon's blood are playing nice, I think, giving me something reminiscent of Dragon's Milk. Overall this scent is cold and warm at the same time, to me, and just very nice and somehow unlike anything else I own. Glad I settled upon this one of all the dragon blends!

[jolarocknrolla]

Green pine-y and a bit of leather when wet and then ever-so pleasantly sweet ... like a cold mountain-top w/ scrub herbs and wildflowers and a wiff if sweet inscence. I'll be honest, if i didn't know there was red musk in there i would NOT have picked it out at all, it's that subtle, and red musk tends to go (!!!!) on me - this musk feels more like that sweet pale note in RPG: Neutral rather than the red musk in anything else i've tried from BPAL.

 

Verdict: i LOVE this ... it's a sweet, gentle scent though, not the monster i was expecting. Warm and wonderful and layered, not masculine or overly musky at all. I'm actually shocked, NOT what i was expecting, and in a good way!

[Silvertree]

Zmey Gorynych is neither lewd nor aggressive. It is, however, compelling and seductive. I get a lot of golden glowing amber and a little hint of crisp, slightly sweet frost, so it seems to be warm and cool at the same time. Definitely adding this to the hoard!

[ellebelle]

Sweet resin-y snowbank, I <3 you! The intial scent is most definitely the BPAL frost note, but right from the beginning it is warmed by the all of the resins. I particularly get a lot of amber, which is just what I hoped for! As the frost note fades, the dragon's blood note comes out but its not sickly sweet or in your face. I get little to no leather from this.

[Andalei]

This is a lot lighter and sweeter than I thought when reading the notes and the description of it as being "robust, lewd and powerful". Red musk and dragon's blood both seem to have a bad habit of completely taking over and they both behave nicely in this blend.

 

In the bottle I can smell a bit of the pine and something almost citrusy, maybe the gold dust on the leather?

 

On my skin both those notes fade and it becomes this beautiful sweet resin scent. The red musk is predominant, but it's subdued and not stomping all over the other notes. Everything else is so wonderfully blended that I can't pick out individual notes.

 

I do not like leather and didn't notice it in the description initially, but I can't smell it at all here. This is just gorgeous, and I'm so happy I was able to get a bottle.

Edited September 13, 2012 by Andalei

[zankoku_zen]

Red musk, frankincense and leather.

 

Sexy, leather, red.

[angelicruin]

Love this one! I get lots of leather, incense, and a frosty note. Tons of throw after just dabbing a small portion on my arm. I can't wait to sniff this as it ages.

[violetblue]

I rarely like leather, but this is gorgeous! Not sure if it's something I might reach for, but there's something really different and dark about it. I love the peek of sweetness that's waffling from my wrist too.

[Blood onmy hands]

Zmey Gorynych smells really amazing. It reminds me of blends like CC: Female (only better, more sweet and not as powdery) and Golden Priapus (not as pine-y). It mostly has a sweet, vanilla-y quality on my skin, with undertones of sweet, slightly powdery resins from the amber & incense notes and a dark, sexy, leathery base. I can't really pick out the red musk, and that usually amps up on me and takes over any bpal blend that it's in. Mostly this is sweet resins, amber and leather loveliness on me <3.

[Monday]

On my skin wet: Lots of red musk and some bubblegum from the daemonorops. Sweet and headache inducing.

On my skin dry: The red musk is doing its usual cologne impression. The leather is coming through and a hint of snow. This feels disjointed to me, the snow and other notes aren't blending but fighting. It's sweet but at the same time rather masculine.

[mymymai]

ITI: I get galbanum, thick resin, sweet frankincense, something almost like clove, and lost of rest musk. It's moody and certainly fits images I have seen of such Slavic red dragons.

 

Wet: Red musk, almost bordering on dragon's blood, galbanum, thick incense, frankincense and something sweet and almost fruity.

 

Dry: Lovely and resinous with frankincense and lots of musk, and perhaps a touch of vanilla from some where. It's intriguing and something I think will suit fall and winter perfectly.

[ljaylh]

Hmmm... on me, this smells kinda like a robust, lewd and powerful blend of dollar-store aftershave, red hard-boiled candies, and sweaty leather.Sounds gross, yes? Ah but no, my friends, gross it is not.

 

The star of the show here for me is the amber incense fluffing around all those delicious resins - without the amber this would probably be too much, but the amber lends a lovely dusty quality that makes the resins into a nice warm snuggly blanket for the red musk and dragon's blood to settle into. So ultimately, I end up with this snuggly blanket of warm amber and resins, with little hints of sweet goodness from the red musk and DB (this is the combo that's giving me the red candy smell).

 

I was a little concerned when I first put it on, because it really was very cologne-y on me (this is what frankincense does on my skin sometimes), but that didn't last long. And I'm honestly not picking up any gold or tundra frost - it just doesn't feel like either of those things on me at all.. nothing metallic or particularly gold (if this perfume was a colour, it would be the deep orangey-red of desert sands from somewhere like Namibia or even the Aussie outback. But I've never seen any dragons in the outback here, and believe me.. I've looked. The only thing that I found myself trying to find in here was the leather, which didn't make an appearance for about 20 minutes.. but when it did, it was like I'M HERE! LEATHER! HERE I AM!!! and suddenly all that lovely snuggly amber-resininess was nowhere to be found. Boo to that, I say... BOO! Usually I love a good dollop of leather in my BPALs, but I was enjoying this much more before LEATHER showed up. But the weird thing is, the leather keeps coming and going.. here one minute, gone the next, then here again, and so on. And the leather goes slightly pine-ish sometimes too - maybe that's the tundra frost? I dunno, this Mr Gorynych is a weird one. It's at its best for me after about 40 minutes when everything seems to finally settle in and balance out.

 

So in the final analysis, Zmey Gorynych smells like Puff the Magic Dragon meets Arthur Fonzarelli - he's the suave, leather jacket wearing dragon who thinks he's all tough and cool but really he's just a big softie who snuggles with a blankie at night, keeps red candies in his pocket, and likes to smell nice for the ladies

 

EDITED UPDATE: I had to come back and update this, because sadly when I checked my arm about 20 minutes after writing it.. all I had left was a soft pine smell.. kind of like a cleaning product smell. A nice cleaning product smell, but definitely that kind of fragrance. So I guess I finally found the 'tundra frost', but all that lovely musk and amber and resin business has completely gone. Sad.

.

Edited October 2, 2012 by sunshinedaisybliss

[yakiguri]

I'm...not sure what to think of Zmey Gorynych. My first try I smelled absolutely nothing. When I retried later using a bit more, I got primarily red musk mixed with vanilla, and the tiniest hint of galbanum. No snow, no leather, no amber. Odd, and I blame red musk since I tend to amp it. Dammit.

 

Of course, on Mr. WhiteElf it's everything the description evokes--powerful and warm, yet chilling at the same time, like an ancient red dragon stepping into the snow. Can't complain though since I got Bakunawa for myself being Filipino, and for Mr. WhiteElf since he's Russian. Fitting, I guess.

[milo]

Red musk has a habit of being the centre of attention in a lot of bpal blends. Here, it is one of the participants, and not one note stands out. At first, I'm getting warm, incensey slightly spicy red musk. After a bit, the aquatic comes out, so it's got a bit of a cool edge now along with everything else. Personally, I wish it had stayed the way it was before the aquatic came out, I really liked the warm, spicy/incense/red musk combo. The aquatic vibe just seems 'wrong' somehow. No leather here that I can detect. Disappointed, but at least I dodged a bullet.

[mistressfizz]

Sniff: Thick red musk and clouds of dusty incense, with a sharp herbal undertone

 

Wet: More and more dusty. The red musk is not as strong and a sweet resin dominates. I definitely get hints of wood and earth, and the herbal note is just a whisper. The leather is not detectable by my nose.

 

Dry: I'm getting a powdery diaper smell now, kind of sour and incredibly musty. Unfortunately, this is the second D*Con blend which hasn't worked on me

[crebbsgirl]

I'm not sure what it is here, but something is going VERY "cologne-y" on my skin. It's a little sharp, and cold feeling. Not for me.

[cfrancesca]

This one kind of jumped all over the place for me and was a big morpher. When first applied I got a slightly sweet red musk scent with smokey incense and resins in the background, but there's also some sharpness in there, which could be coming from the "tunda frost" perhaps? I've noticed when some cold or atmospheric type notes are mixed with other stronger notes (ie red musk, leather) the entire scent can turn sharp on my skin. As it dries, the leather peeks out and starts amping big time. A few moments later this has settled into a sweet powdery leather (I'm sure I'm getting powder from the amber which almost without fail is turning on me lately) and hints of soapiness (must be from the daemondrop resin). It's actually not too bad, it smells like a clean baby that's into leather onesies.

[brilliantcat]

Holy shit this smells amazing in the decant! Frosty, snowy, piney, a bit minty with just a hint of darker things. On me, I get the minty snow and a breath of smoke and something sweet, likely the dragon's blood. Very little if any red musk and that usually amps like crazy on me so there must be just a tiny hint of it in this blend. The snow/mint burn off quickly as they usually do on me and I'm left with a slightly sharp yet lightly dusty ambery and resin blend. I think the last bit of the tundra frost is what's sharp here, it has a bit of a cologney vibe but I like the rest of the blend. Unfortunately that sharpness never abates so this dragon is a fail on me.

[porcelina]

I'm getting majority dragon's blood here with a wonderful haze of red musk and maybe a touch of incense. Sadly, the resins and leather are not very prominent on my skin. I actually get a lot more subtlety and more of the other notes when I smell it in the bottle, but on my skin it gets very soft and muted and fades pretty quickly.

[lady_pandora]

I amp the hell out of the red musk in this one. I smell just a touch of dragon's blood, too, and I think the resins may be hanging around in the background but I can't pick them out individually. The leather appears partway through the weartime and has kind of a smoky or burnt quality, to me.

 

Unfortunately, I can't really tell this apart from Die Sunde, vom Tod Verfolgt on my skin, other than the leather note, and said leather note isn't quite agreeing with me, thus making Die Sunde the winner of the two. (Not only do I amp the musk in both, but they also share the supporting notes of amber and frankincense, though I can't really pick them out in either, and the orchid in Die Sunde even has a weird dragon's blood quality to it, on me.) So, since I already have a bottle of that, Zmey Gornych may be one for the swaps. I do like it, but I just amp the red musk too much for its individuality to come out.

[aquazoo]

I get the resin immediately. A little bit citrus, a lot of leather.