Vital Fluid

[Ashmedai]

The breath and tears and pulse of all life; the fluid that flows through all creation, permeating space and time and spirit: olibanum, red benzoin absolute, labdanum, betel leaf, galbanum, mastic, and angelica.

Oh wow! Strong benzoin and labdanum, with a hint of angelica - this is stunning on application! Something slightly peppery comes out as it dries, I'm assuming this is the betel leaf (I have no clue what that smells like, so I'm guessing here), and it complements the sweet resins beautifully. Olibanum is very faint, I can barely tell it's there, but it gives this a smoky undertone. I don't smell any galbanum or mastic at this stage, but it's a great blend, especially for lovers of sweet incense resins, which I am. Near final dry-down I can detect a little more olibanum, a touch of mastic and now definitely some galbanum with its green-woody-rooty notes. Star players remain the benzoin and labdanum, making the blend sweet, dark-vanillic and rich, with the rooty, herbacious and deep green note of galbanum right alongside. I'm loving this already, and it's going to age spectacularly - very glad I got a bottle!

[fountaingrl]

I utterly adore this! Oddly, in the opening I get green olives. (Don't ask me - weird skin, apparently.) I am so glad I had to run errands while testing, otherwise I might have been tempted to scrub. After maybe 30 minutes, the olives disappear abruptly and for a couple minutes the scent is pleasant but very soft and I was worried it had disappeared.

 

BUT THEN! Oh man oh man. This is a fantastic incense scent. Warm, delicious, unusual, but not overpowering and not 'head shop.' I kept catching wafts of this deliciousness and I was amazed it was me! I don't know that I can say I like Vital Fluid more than OLLA Eve, but consider this: I've actually pondered whether that might not be true today. It is beyond lovely and unique and perfect.

 

I've already ordered two backups and I'm not even remotely sheepish about this. In fact, I'm proud of my restraint.

[Lunasariel]

In the imp: Now this is an odd little duck. I'm unfamiliar with many of the notes here beyond what Fragrentica and Google can tell me, so I'll be rubbish with picking out individual notes. For now, all I can say is that it's interestingly clean and sharp, but with a sweet, almost soporific, undertone.

 

Wet: The sharpness amps way up upon initial application. (Frankincense, is that you?) However, after just a few minutes, it mellows WAY out, and what is probably the benzoin and labdanum come to dominate. Yummy! The herbal, incensey notes are still hanging around at the edges. Most incense blends tend to put my hackles up (sorry, recovering Catholic over here), but this one is different enough that it feels warm and mysterious, not like someone is about to roust me out of bed at 6:30 to sit on a hard piece of wood in an unheated room for like four hours. Oddly enough, the first mental image I got was the soft-focus filters they would use in the 60s to make women look all unearthly and extra-beautiful. That's what this scent feels like.

 

Dry: A slightly smoky take on the mellow, resinous blend that incense usually dries down to on me. Again like most incense blends, it LASTS. 12 hours easy (although it's gone slightly sour at this point), and overnight more than likely.

[unxolve]

It starts out with a sharp almost...persony/animalistic skunkish smell on me, under that there is something woody that's nice but the sharp smell- ack. Even though there's no frankincense? Everything I don't like about frankincense.

 

Definitely disappearing and calming down. Becoming nicer now, sweet mellow...

 

And then that Frankincense/skunk is there to stay. Maybe I just don't get along with incense. Behind it there's a hint of something sweet and nice but I can't get past that overlay. Not for me.

[elbow]

Waaugh, this is soooo good: a deep dark pool of resinous heaven.

 

My nose is not super well educated, so I keep thinking "root beer?" when I smell it. This is nothing like a sugary canned soda, though; it's rich and smooth and complex and molasses-dark (both literally and... olfactorily?). The aspects that make me think of root beer -- a slight peppery fizz over an earthy sweetness -- are actually also reminiscent of a canned betel chew that a former co-worker of mine used to use.

 

On me it stays close to the skin, and fades surprisingly quickly for a resin. But until it fades, I can't keep my nose off my wrist. I don't say this often, but: I think I might need a bottle. I think it will layer well with quite a few things, and I'm confident it will age beautifully.

[BoneBone24]

Wet: A dark, dull resin with a touch of ...is that olive? There’s something thin, greenish, and vaguely fruity that reminds me of olive leaf. Color me intrigued!

 

Drydown: It blossoms on the skin. Grittier, peppery resins. It smells like tumultuous clouds of smoke and soot. Pitch black with shards of grey. Olibanum reigns supreme, given a spicy kick from the labdanum and betel leaf. This is a take-no-prisoners, damn the man, BAMF, anarchist - type of scent, and I like it!

 

Dry: It hits a nice middle ground between the wet and drydown phases now. A sweeter, more enticing blend of resins, brightened by creamy-spicy benzoin and distinctly green galbanum. A slightly spicy edge is still lent by the labdanum and betel leaf, but they’re a little lighter and more glittery now. It's a very different sort of resin blend, that is all at once delicious and dark, thin and heavy. More simply put, it's a delightful whirlwind of mysterious resins.

 

 

8.5 out of 10 bones

[zankoku_zen]

Dark, dull resin with pepper overnotes. I definitely get the labdanum, and I think A TON OF MASTIC. Because its got this weird, burnt rubber smell. Of course this has a decent throw and good wear length.

 

Burnt woods, resins, plastic.

[Haltija]

I for sure get the "green olives" impression immediately on my skin and truth be told even after it completely dried I smelled nothing else but olives and a very faint hint of frankincense. Definitely not for me!

[Magycmyste]

Ok, so most of these notes are ones I haven't quite learned to tell apart from each other (except betel leaf, I've smelled that often enough), but they're ones I seem to like in the blends I've sniffed them in.

 

In the imp: Sweet, sweet resin and incense. It has a sticky scent to it - like I would except it to be viscous, almost like honey, but with the incense scent.

 

Wet on skin: Still sweet incense. I only swiped it on one wrist, but I got a lot of oil off that swipe.

 

Dried down: Sweet, and the incense has almost gone a little woody, but pleasantly light wood, not dark. Like a freshly cut beam, or balsa wood.

 

Throw: This had some serious throw on me to start with, but it's gotten a little lighter since it's dried down.Still very pleasant, though. The incensey feel grows stronger the closer my nose gets to my wrist.

 

Verdict: **** This is very pretty. But...I actually don't see myself reaching for it too often. I'll definitely keep the decant, and I might hunt down a bottle later, but for now, I don' think I need to buy one.

[theseagrows]

got a frimp of this in a swap. generally mastic and i are not friends and the other notes are unknown or hit or miss but i love trying new bpals so here goes.

 

it opens up like dusty, dry yet leafy? i smell wood and something that reminds me of the smell of oil paints or turpentine, but there is still that wooden/wood chips scent going on as well. after a couple minutes it turns to sort of wet wood chips still mixed with something vegetal. such an odd scent, and to be honest, it's kind of stomach churning. i'm afraid i've gotta scrub this one off, it's just weirdly disturbing to me, and i am trying to figure out how this feeling fits in with the scent description and meaning of "vital fluid"!!

[annemathematics]

I was excited to try this scent for my love of labdanum and angelica and resins in general. mostly on my skin this was strong and galbanum heavy. light and clean and bright for a resin scent. galbanum backed by mastic. the other notes not really detectable. (galbanum has a tendency to do this on me).

[agirlnamedfury]

Spicy, deep, and resinous. I don't know what most of the listed notes are supposed to smell like (my nose isn't that educated yet), but I agree with the couple of reviewers who said they detected olives. There's definitely something distinctly olive-y in here. It's peppery and herbal all over as well.

 

This is one of those BPAL scents that I like the smell of abstractly, but I don't know if I would really like wearing it as a perfume and smelling like it all day long, you know?

 

More than anything, though, I'm really impressed by the color of this oil -- in the imp, it's so dark it's almost black. Maybe don't wear this one with white clothing!

[Fury]

So resins and I are on very good terms. Generally primarily resinous blends are home runs for me. Vital Fluid is the exception to the rule because ye gads, this was painful to keep on my skin olfactory-wise. Sharp, evil olive demons raising from a crypt of bones carved from Indian resins. I got the feeling that if I could suffer through the initial blast it would be lovely, slightly threatening Indian attars such as one might use to pay homage to Kali-Ma. Alas I am not made of such strong stuff as to endure it til then.

[milo]

Something medicinal and strong 'something' at first, along with woods and or musks. No incense for me, sadly. This one is acrid and off putting. Yuck.

Edited July 22, 2015 by milo

[tinyvulture]

Beautiful sweet resins and incense: benzoin, labdanum, olibanum, galbanum, mastic, ahhh! I don't know which is which, but they all combine to make my nose happy. Starts off like sweet root beer at first, then more peppery and woodsy. No idea about betel leaf or angelica, unfamiliar to me. But I am wondering if betel leaf bears any similarity to olive leaf because I am getting such a distinct olive note! Similar to Haloa, Angeronalia, which contain olive leaf. It's a mystery.

 

Anyway, to sum up, warm, heavy incense, plus olives!

[Blood onmy hands]

Starts off strangely green and herbal smelling, but dries down to a dusty, warm, amber-y labdanum incense. A bit powdery on me, and smells like old incense in a stuffy room where everything is dusty and dry.