Review & Recommendation: All 5 of BathSabbath's Fall Scents

I finally cracked and got my BathSabbath order!

Pretty velvet pouches!

As always, Virginia is so nice. She knew I was trying to save on international shipping by waiting until both her Fall & Winter collections are out so I can just make one big order, but since I can't wait anymore, she actually let me have an early preview of her Winter collection! I also got a bunch of free sample & a free tiny soap that's so cute!

She's so incredibly sweet!

Anyway, here's the review of her Fall scents & the soap sample in Excider, a Fall scent. All reviews of BathSabbath are under this tag. As always, reviews are done blind until I'm done with the TL;DR, overviews are written if any notes surprised me.

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Brown Leafed Vertigo

"The smell of Autumn leaves and berries, rounded out by earthy timber and fresh soil."

This would smell so awesome on a guy, even though it's a bit on the sweet side. It's masculine spiciness and wood resin, with some fruity tartness that's so well-blended, I can't pick out the fruits. For some reason, this scent smells edible despite the masculine spiciness & wood resin. There's almost a filling nutty bread sort of scent to it, with no nuts I can identify. If I smell this on a guy, I'm not sure if I want to kiss him or start nomming on him. I'm so in lust with this scent.

After around 13-15min, the wood definitely gets a bit stronger. I think this may smell like potpourri on some people, but on me, it's still the original scent, just a bit more wood resin.

TL;DR: An edible, cool masculine spiced wood cologne, with a hint of tartness.

Overview: I don't smell any earth in this, and I'm wondering if BathSabbath's earth notes end up smelling slightly "nutty" on me. I tried this on my bf and it's less sweet on him. It makes him smell soo good! No dirt smell on him either.

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Excider

"Classic Apple Cider, a base of warm apple with notes of Cinnamon, Clove and Orange zest."

This just keeps blooming and blooming. I get apple and fall spices at first, which was like any Fall apple cider/potpourri sort of scents, but the apple just keeps getting more fragrant. I'm really not sure what they put in this, but it's one of the most fragrant apples I've ever encountered. The smell ends up being a more fresh and light sort of Fall apples scent. There's a bit of a woodiness in it, but on me, it's very slight so it smells more like apple cider from a wooden keg rather than potpourri. I thought I was bored of the apple cider sort of scents that every store seem to have for Fall, but this actually made me sit up.

TL;DR: A light and fresh apple cider stored in a wooden keg.

Overview: Oooh. Oranges. The orange note was what kept this scent light and fresh. That was unexpected, oranges are usually my death notes.

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Feed My Frankenstein

"That song is about pumpkin pie, didn't you know? The comforting smell of Pumpkin with a touch of Maple, Cinnamon, and Nutmeg, rounded out by notes of vanilla and butter."

This smells like lemon-orange cheesecake at first. There's even a buttery smell in it, like a very buttery cheesecake crust. The sour cheese smell was getting heavier and heavier, and that got me a bit worried, but at around 3-5 minutes, it suddenly blended in. I was confused. It kinda smells like ketan hitam, a black glutinous rice dish that's sometimes seasoned with santan (coconut milk) and orange peels. There's even the rich and slightly "dusty" smell that black glutinous rice comes with. I love this scent so much! It's creamy, and makes you feel full and satisfied.

Indonesia has awesome desserts..
Photography by Peppy Nasution, found on indonesiaeats.com

TL;DR: A creamy ketan hitam with orange peels.

Overview: I tried sniffing this again and I think the vanilla may be going sour on me, to create that orange smell. If I sniff hard, I think I smell pumpkin, but mixed with everything else, it smells like a rich, thick Indonesian glutinous rice dish.

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None More Black Licorice

"A pure, true black licorice scent. Anise with a salty touch."

Well, I hate liquorice so I know I'd hate this since I know how great BathSabbath is at nailing realistic scents. I know this will be a pure black liquorice scent and yes, I was right. It's definitely black liquorice. It's one of those chewy black liquorice and you can even smell the chewy candy smell in this.

Seriously, who likes this thing? I swear they're invented just to make children HATE candy.
Image courtesy of foodbeast.com

TL;DR: Black liquorice. The worst "candy" ever created. If you ever bought a child black liquorice unrequested, you clearly hate children.

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November Coming Fire

"The smell of a Bonfire on a cold autumn night. Hints of smoke, sweet woods and patchouli."

Omg this smells sooo good! But er..it smells like steak. A delicious, well-seasoned steak at in a fancy restaurant where the description for each menu item are a mini odes to food, but steak nonetheless. The steak has rosemary butter sauce for sure.

It gets sweeter after 22 minutes and one of the chefs I asked to sniff the perfume says it smells more like lamb chops with a rosemary-mint sauce. I'm still torn between lamb chops & steak, but either way, it's definitely meat.

I'm actually really hungry now. While this scent isn't for me, I'm planning to make several chefs I know sniff this to create steak/lamb chops that tastes as delicious as this smells. 

When it dries down, it becomes a dry, almost dusty wood & incense smell. It's actually very alluring. I definitely love the dry down, but I'm not sure if I want to smell like steak/lamb chops for 1-1 1/2 h.

TL;DR: Gastronomically orgasmic steak/lamb chops.

Overview: Patchouli usually makes something smell old to me, but I didn't get that here. I know BathSabbath's smoke notes turn into burning BBQ meat on me, so I guess tempered with all the other notes, it ends up smelling like cooked meat?

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Excider Soap

So pretty!

This is so pretty, I decided to just cut a sliver from the bottom to test it out since I want to use this as decoration. It smells a lot like the perfume oil, only it's missing the woodiness that's underneath the fresh spiced apples in the perfume oil. It works like any other bar soap I've tried, which means that it does leave that tacky feeling bar soaps always seem to leave on your skin.

Review: Wild Hybrid, 10 scents + Soap!

I recently got 2 sets of 5 perfume samplers from Wild  and got a blogger sample of one of their soaps.

Very secure packaging! No leakage at all!

Customer Service

Ross contacted me to let me know when he shipped my order, so I'm happy with the customer service. The turnaround time's not bad:

Ordered: May 30
Shipped: June 3
Received: July 2

This is my first time ordering anything from New Zealand, so I'm not sure if this is the normal shipping time. If you need your order in a hurry, it may be best to contact Ross to check if there are any expedited shipping options available.

Prices:

5 ml bottles: $13.50, $15.30, $18, $22.50, $27

Samples:

• $10.80 for 5 general catalogue scents ($2.16 each)
• $24.30 for 9 themed scents ($2.70 each)
• None available for limited edition scents

Perfume Oil General Review

The throw's pretty good. I can smell it while I'm typing when I put it on my wrist. You can even smell it from chatting-with-the-boyfriend-while-watching-GoT-together distance for about 1-1.5h. I picked GoT since it's the kind of show that puts you off cuddling mood, but you're still sitting close together (maybe even holding hands) for moral support because you know a character you love will die. After that, you have to smell close to your skin, but the smell lingers on your skin for about 9-12h.

Some of these are great, complex blends while some struck me as very synthetic smells. The samples I got are for the cheaper, general catalogue blends, so I have no idea what the limited edition scents would smell like. If anyone knows of any decanting circles for this brand, let me know so I can check out how they smell before I commit to a full purchase. For some reason, I often get a different scent from what I was expecting from the descriptions.

As usual, I didn't check the descriptions until I wrote the overviews. And almost every single time, I had to go for a 2nd sniff since I was going, "Wait, what?"

So yes, I definitely recommend getting samples before committing to a full purchase. Now on to scent reviews!

Doormouse

"Tea-soaked fur, caramel cakes with a thin smear of butter, toast crumbs and pink pepper"

This smells like raisins and wood, with an icy coolness. The icy coolness that smells like a medicinal salve calms down to a cold, wet smell. I'm on the fence about this.

Overview: I got confused and went for a second sniff after reading the description. I guess the wood smell can be the pink pepper, though it mostly just smells like old wood. Maybe the kind of wood in taverns that have soaked up a bit of a wine smell. Taverns that look like this:

Obviously, I found this pic on a D&D blog
Image courtesy of: dungeonsmaster.com/

I don't get butter, toast or caramel either, though the medicinal smell may have come from the tea. There's definitely a raisin smell which I like, but I'm not sure if that's just caramel going sour on me. I know some caramel notes go sour on me. I like this scent better on the second sniff, but it still sounds different from the description.

Florimel

"Pear, pearlescent flowers, clean linen and honey"

Sparkling, white wine sangria. And it's one of those that'll be served with flowers and bust a hole through your wallet. I swear you can smell some fizziness in this. The fizziness dies down after 5-10 minutes, and it kinda smells like like a cleaned kitchen. There's that clean, slightly soapy disinfected smell with a fruity scent to it. I didn't like the cleaning soap smell, but that's one of the first notes to disappear as this perfume fades. The perfume fades off to this  fruity honey-sweetened wood smell.

Overview: I'm not sure where the fizzy smell comes from. I wonder if the cleaning soap smell comes from the clean linen bit. It smells more like a cleaned floor than cleaned cloth though. I definitely love the dry down!

Languor 

"Clean linen, fresh cut grass, summer blooming flowers and a touch of soil."

It's a green scent, but there's that bitter freshness you get from crushed plant stalks that makes this more of a realistic scent of greeneries rather than a room-spray sort of scent. The green scent keeps leaning towards becoming overpowering and turning this into a room-spray sort of scent, even thought there's that crushed stalk scent and a bit of a dirty scent grounding it. Towards the end, it's just a full on green perfume that smells very room-spray-ish.

Overview: I got my boyfriend to sniff this, and he describes it as a "generic car perfume" scent. After he mentioned it, I realized he was right. Guess I'm not too crazy about this.

Lothario

"Night blooming flowers with a touch of campfire smoke and leather."

Ice cold, mountain spring water and leather. This is a more masculine scent but I like it. As it dries down, the slight sweetness in this dies down and it really just smells like wet leather. I like leather, but I know a bunch of people don't like the scent.

Overview: Nope, can't smell any smokiness in this. But then again, I got used to BathSabbath & Darling Clandestine's smoky notes, where you actually smell smoke. Not sure how night blooming flowers smell like, and I actually googled it. Several flowers bloom at night and their fragrances range from "deep and fresh" to "spicy". Not sure which particular flower is picked for this scent, but I guess whatever it is just makes the leather smell wet. I personally like this!

Since this seems more of a masculine scent, I tried it on my guy. On him, it smells more like wet leather, devoid of any sweetness. I like it, but he doesn't.

Mnemosyne

"Lavender, jasmine, lime, tomato leaf, moonflower and a dribble of cinnamon"

This is such a relaxing scent! It smells like drinking jasmine tea with a slice of lemon, while sitting in a blooming garden after a springtime rain. Unfortunately, the scent starts smelling a bit like lemon soap before the cinnamon becomes the most prominent note. Eventually it smells more like drinking a sweetened cinnamon drink with powdery lemons. Not too bad.

Overview: This is one of the scents where the cinnamon just takes over. I'm not sure where that powdery lemon smell comes from, and I even sniffed this twice to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Nope..powdery, dusty lemons.

Imagine how this smells when it's powdered..
Image courtesy of everydaylife.globalpost.com

Purple Cream

"A luxurious dessert of juicy boysenberries, blueberries and passionfruit in a vanilla cream base."

Grape flavoured syrup water. The artificial, synthetic grape smell is strong. I'm not a fan of this.

It smells like how I imagine this would smell
Image courtesy of kegworks.com

Overview: Nope, can't smell all that. Just an artificial grape scent. It smells like grape sodas, but there's no fizziness to it, so it smells like grape soda that has gone flat, leaving behind a grape flavoured syrup water.

Satyr

"Cinnamon, butterscotch, almond and spiced musk."

The initial smell is scary, but this ends up great, I promise. Initially, this unfortunately smells like vanilla-flavoured cough syrup. Or Nyquil mixed with vanilla essence. It's sharply sweet at first but calms down to have the most perfect pound cake scent, only it's hidden behind the cough syrup smell. Eventually, the cough syrup completely and this turns into the most heavenly gourmand scent. I have a hard time deciding if this smells of cinnamon spiced milk drizzled in caramel or cinnamon spiced pound cake drizzled in caramel. There's a faintly pound cake scent (actual pound cake, not the artificial kind), but it often loses out to the strong cinnamon smell. As it dries down, the cinammon overpowers the other notes.

Overview: I was getting worried I got the wrong scent at first since I didn't expect something named "Satyr" to be gourmand. I was expecting something more green and earthy, I guess. From the notes, I don't know where that pound cake smell comes from, but I wish it'll stay longer! This scent is still great, even when it goes though!

Summer Garden Party

"Fresh cut grass, cinnamon cookie, strawberry, rose and honeysuckle"

Initially, it's a tart, dirty green smell that I didn't enjoy. Eventually, the dirty smell fades off and this becomes a delicious smell of sweet pomegranate and basil iced tea. This gets very sweet on me though.

Overview: I did a second sniff since I can't smell any cinnamon in this, which is weird since the cinnamon note Wild Hybrid uses tend to overpower everything else on my skin. I guess the mixture of everything ends up smelling like pomegranate tea. A rose and honeysuckle combination usually produces a distinct smell that I often recognize and associate with Midsummer Dreams Apothecary's Rapunzel. I don't smell it here since the sweet, fruit smell and the green smell are strong in this scent.

The Beekeeper

"Honey, pipe tobacco and blackberry"

Just pure honey with hints of lemon. Smells exactly like L'Occitane's Honey & Lemon line, with a slight lotion smell to it.

This is my favourite L'Occitane scent line so I'm happy!
Image courtesy of fragrantica.com

Overview: I honestly can't smell any tobacco in this, so I went for a second sniff. I notice there's a bit of a Baygon (popular Indonesian insecticide, smells like Alkemia's Prairie 66) smell in the background. It's faint enough that I still like this. The lemon smell may have been the blackberry, but the honey is so strong that I only smell a tartness to it. On the second sniff, the lotion smell is stronger than I remembered and got me a bit iffy on this, but the dry down is absolutely gorgeous -honeyed wood!

Witches Cottage

"A wild and verdant garden of flowers, herbs, fruits and vegetables surrounding an ancient wooden cottage."

This initially smelled like what I imagined HoG's Strawberry Patchouli would smell like -strawberries with just faint traces of patchouli for that quiet, herbal clean smell. It smells sooo good! Unfortunately, the patchouli went away pretty fast on me, and this just smells like a plain berry smell.

Overview: This scent is more green and fruity than the description makes it out to be. It's a very sweet smell.

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Brain Matter Bar Soap Review

"Vanilla syrup and white peach flesh"

Like most soap bars, I find it drying and my hands end up with that dry, sticky feeling afterwards. Scent-wise, the scent smells more of a peach scent that leans towards smelling artificial, but still smells great. While the scent's pretty strong for the bar soap, it disappears fast as soon as you use it.