Fallen Angels in Hell

[strahlend]

Fallen Angels in Hell, John Martin.
Infernal red amber, scorched frankincense, damiana, red ginger, bloodroot, cayenne, and sulphur.

Sniffing from my decant I get a strong impression of ginger. Particularly the kind of ginger that tends to not appeal to me until it gets on my skin (as in Inextinguishable Hatred - which I love) it's a bit overwhelming and sharp. But I've found that giving this wild ginger a chance to get skin contact makes all the difference in the world. Such is the case here.

Skin Testing – yes, it goes on strongly ginger, but within moments a transformation starts to happen. Fallen Angels in Hell goes right into smelling lovely and resinous. Frankincense steps right up and dances with the ginger, taking the lead. There's a bit of spice lingering around the ginger giving it a twist, cayenne I would suppose from the listed notes, but probably wouldn't have guessed otherwise. There's a lovely balance happening between the roundness of the frankincense with the red amber supporting it and warmly spiced ginger.
Personally I don't detect sulpher at any time, nor do I get a 'scorched' feel from this scent.

On my skin this turns into a dominantly frankincense scent, but the ginger tweak really makes it interesting and sets it apart from other ginger blends and other resinous blends. I love both of those genres, so this is quite a hit with me.

[whataboutprom]

I think I have finally learned my lesson: I cannot wear ginger. When wet I smell overwhelming ginger, and not much else. After about half an hour, the ginger was so strong and unpleasant that I had to wash this off. For me, it was not worth the ginger to try and reach the other notes during dry down.

[zankoku_zen]

Cayenne, ginger, frankincense and amber. This is a spicy resin/amber blend. Red-hot, and spicy!

 

Spicy, red, resinous.

[patina]

Odd red spice. A little like red hot candies. My mind initially says cinnamon, but it's its own brand of sweet red spiciness, rounded out by the amber and frankincense.

 

This would be a definite bottle purchase, except ginger vanishes on my skin. It turns into a nice sweet resin with a little spice and very little throw. Good, but not great.

[white_jenna63]

Looking back, I'm not quite sure why I got this one. The name, maybe? 'Cause besides the amber and frankincense, I would pass on the rest of the notes. On first sniff, I definitely get the scorched/sulphur at the back of my throat. It's actually very difficult to sniff for awhile, and then it dries down to ginger. And with the exception of Kumiho, that's not a note that I care for. And I'm still trying to remember that when I make my selections.

[Monday]

Spicy! On my skin this is dusty ginger and cayenne. This doesn't morph but stays a spicy hot cayenne and sweet ginger with some dust and resins. The ginger reminds me of Saw-Scaled Viper, it's actually quite foody.

[ladymeag]

I ordered a bottle unsniffed because it seemed no one was doing decants for this one!

 

In the bottle: Red ginger - I can see why it's called that. A little of the cayenne comes up to say hello, as well.

 

On Me: Wet, it's ginger and pepper first, a little sweet somehow. Shortly after that, something (I'm guessing in the red or bloody range, since those usually don't work for me) comes forward and starts to add in a pink urinal cake smell - a little sweet, a little well, pink. Definitely heavy on ginger - if it was a little less sweet and missing the pink smell, I'd be all over this - as it stood, I couldn't take more than about an hour of wear and I had to remove it.

[fufu_berry]

Wet through 1 hour: Perfect spicy dry ginger! It has a little bit of a nostril-searing quality from the cayenne and sulphur that is awesome.

 

1 hour plus: Lots of frankincense and amber sweetening it up - I liked the earlier stage better, but this certainly isn't bad. Perhaps a candidate for a scent locket; I've also heard that frankincense mellows as it ages, so I'm looking forward to spending many years with Fallen Angels in Hell.

[milo]

I recognize the red ginger right away, which is a death note for me. Much to pungent. After a bit, the ginger fades, and it's mostly cassia, of the 'red hots' variety. Now it smells just like cinnamon gum. Not for me.

[brilliantcat]

Imp: Deliciously resinous, smoky, and spicy.

 

Wet: Same as in imp but more roundly spicy.

 

Dry: Spicy, smoky, nose-tickling, and slightly resinous. I quite like it!

[starfish327]

Burned fried rice, on my skin. I couldn't let it go to dry down, the smell was so strong. Oh, and plastic. Burned rice and plastic. I'm guessing this would be great on some people, but there's something with my chemistry that doesn't want to play nice with this one.

[Blood onmy hands]

I've avoided reviewing this one, because it's way too spicy to my nose. Heavy spice scents give me a headache. As other reviewers have mentioned, this almost has a red hots candy feel, but sharper and sort of dusty/powdery. It's sort of like a cassia and hot pepper smell on me. I didn't think that I disliked red ginger, but this is too much strong spice for me, and lasted after several scrubbings when I tested it.

[WidgetAlley]

Imp: GINGER! Scorching hot gorgeous Vixen-y rooty awesome ginger, oh goodness, I love ginger. And amber, and nose-stinging cayenne, and oh, yum. Just... yum.

 

Wet: Ginger, deep and strong and lovely, and red amber, hot and sunny like in The Lion, and the combination smells like the best ginger tea ever. I get dusty hot cayenne too, but no sulpher or frankincense yet. Oh yum, I want to veil myself in a cloud of this hot lovely ginger.

 

Dry: Hot warm ginger, candle wax, dry incense, pepper and the desert. My goodness. I'm trying very hard to cut down on the amount of BPAL I own right now, but if I weren't, I'd be seeking this out by all means necessary.

[JazzieCazzie]

I had this on my wish list because of the intriguing notes but knew it could be a crapshoot so a little history here ... I list ginger as one of my favorite notes because when it is good it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good (think Shub Shub Shub Shub Shub). But every so often ginger won't work on me. I should probably be even more anal-retentive and get to know which ginger does what but I have reviewed nearly 500 scents based on my review spreadsheet and probably sniffed way more than that which never got reviews (I did ZERO reviews written down between the fall of 2005 and the early spring of 2013).

 

So, anyway, was able to acquire a bottle of this in a swap and decanted an imp for the testing.

 

IN THE IMP: Sharp, hot and, yes, sulphuric, for sure.

 

Dabbed on wrist and in crook of arm.

 

WET: Very hot and metallic, which I recognize as one of the gingers.

 

DRYDOWN: This morphs several times and is kind of fascinating to "watch" ... the first brief morph is to, oddly enough, something that is strongly green or reminds me of fresh greenery, which I didn't expect.

 

Next, I get Chinese food (I do like ginger in my Chinese food, so this is THAT ginger, not the sweet Shub ginger).

 

Finally, it becomes sweeter and more subtle, wet again, like ginger combined with spring rain falling on someone who might have had Chinese food for lunch.

 

OVERALL: This is a tough call. I like it a lot. It's intriguing and unusual and makes me want to put it on again a half hour later. Kidding about that. It DOES make me hungry. But, honestly, in the long run I think an imp of it will be enough for me and I'll probably put the rest of the bottle on my next update of my swap list.

 

On a scale of 1-5, a 4.