Beast Mode

Two words -- ELEGANT RESTRAINT. Beast Mode is an extraordinary perfume. At first I didn't even know what to make of it, it's so unusual and ingenious. First of all, it must be tried on skin, because it is a changeling that depends on your warmth and chemistry. The first time I tried it, I smelled some waxy tuberose and pepper, as a skin scent, and I didn't think it would be my style. But I couldn't stop thinking about it, so the next day I wore it and that time I smelled mostly salmiak (salty licorice) with a little bit of rubbery tuberose. It became a sort of compulsion, to wear it again and dig deeper into its mysteries. I finished off a 2mL sample in a week while waiting for the bottle because I was applying it twice a day. • To me, the most prominent and remarkable part is the silvery base. It smells like ambergris butter. Although there is no natural ambergris in the fragrance, the perfect blending of the ambroxan with the studio-tinctured vanilla and natural civet has made unexpected gritty-waxy OCEANIC MAGIC. Now, I do love big white florals, so at first I thought that a minimalist tuberose was sacrilege, but I'm also a Selkie, so every time I smell that resplendent but cozy, shimmering, buttery musk, I think to myself "thank goddess he didn't hide it under a pile of flowers!" It is a skin scent but actually wafts right off me when I'm moving about, and lasts for hours and hours.

I can't make heads or tails out of Chris's description of this scent, and there are so many adjectives dropped on it (floral, animalic, unisex,) and then this whopper of befuddlement: "Beast Mode, an eau de toilette of deceiving strengths, posits an alternative kind of savage — one of cunning and intention rather than of ostentation and amplitude." How could anyone discern what the hell this is? I'm wearing it right now. Let me be direct. This is a peppery, dry, subtle, scent. It has a gentle and reserved manner, not at all "BEAST MODE." It is more attuned to solitude than sex, more introspective than in-your-face. I don't detect civet, the way I do, for example, in Mitsouko. There is no nasty cat anus gland in here. There is ambroxan and vanilla which seem to give it a warm, amber undertone to cancel out the sharpness of the black pepper. Tuberose? It must be 1% of the composition because I cannot smell it. There is nothing that I have in my collection that smells like this scent. It is different and unique and very well composed, an original. It is, unfortunately, cursed by obfuscating marketing, rendering it confounding and strange when it is really quite intelligent, understated, quiet and lovely.

For the first 20 minutes: bright twangy anise suspended in a ghostly, holographic amber. It's a beautiful smell, fresh warm glowy gossamer. "Minimalism" really does feel like helpful descriptor here. It's understated but captivating, wide open in a way you can really walk around in. The brightness starts to mellow a little and the composition warms, opening up space for a pale breath of vanilla aglow with buttery tuberose. At around 3 hours, the sharp-shiny-peppery corners of the licorice accord have melted away, leaving it earthy and sweet, almost hinting at cinnamon; a languid breeze of ambroxan through tuberose maintains the feeling of uncrowded dimensionality. After a couple more hours, I notice the vanilla get creamier and muskier, and the civet take on definition in its interaction with the licorice. 6 hours after the initial application, it settles into a beautifully blended glowing base that I spend the rest of the day compulsively inhaling whenever I get the opportunity. It's "your skin but better" after about 10 hours. I could never really do it justice, but this is complex, interesting, soothing, and lovely. I love getting to know it better every time I wear it.

Not everyone "clicks" with this fragrance. Beast Mode is a statement, a stroke of creativity, and boldly different. It is bold and a powerful scent who's sillage drifts far, but it never overpowers the room. It is the use of ambroxan in a restrained sense, preventing the aromamolecule from assaulting its environment. The molecule is then twisted and played with throughout the evolution: at times you get a strong muskiness, a sharp pepper, a creamy floral, all melding with the ebb and flow of the day. Beast Mode is a scent you should sample and wear a couple times before you conclude on a lack of creativity or thought. It is every bit as provoking and stimulating as any Rusak creation. Beast Mode is purposefully named to provoke users of the term: people who's only goal is to try to smell mainstream will despise it, yet people who find a liking for Beast Mode will smell quite nice to others.

This is one of those that really needs to be tested on skin. I tried it first on a test strip (came in with a lot of other things) and it gave me a frighten~ (I think the civet might really come out to play on paper). However some kind of gorgeous alchemy happens when you actually wear this stuff. It’s light and amorphous but always seems to “glitter” in the air around me. It’s one of those fragrances that will make you grateful you had the opportunity to smell it. Definitely full bottle worthy~

Just utterly gorgeous. A warm candlelit glow on flushed cheeks. Brittle, dry vanilla shards on waxy tuberose petals dusted with licorice salt, black pepper showered from dramatic height in two passes for even distribution (and a flourish). Pleasantly complex and only teasing at sweetness, like a good modern dessert or hot breath on my neck, it is tantalizing in its nuance and restraint.

First try of this, was not a huge fan. Something, though, drove me to try it again, and it clicked. Majorly in love with this fragrance, now. The pepper, vanilla, tuberose and licorice just smell so delicious, without being cloyingly sweet. The ambroxan and civet aren't too strong for me. It's just such an addictive, warm, spicy smell. Had to buy a backup of this.

@shalimarlover - your first and only review is not even about perfume, just a homophobic biphobic and transphobic comment. lol OK..

I've purchased a few of Chris Rusak's Studio Series samplers over the past few years. On one hand, I love them because I love samples; on the other, because most are works-in-progress, you might receive something you love that will soon cease to exist! Thankfully, one of my favorite samples turned out as Beast Mode. I wasn't crazy about this at first. Something about it was too guttural - maybe the combo of ambroxan and licorice, the latter of which I typically avoid. But, given how much I like Chris's work in general, I gave it a second chance.. then a third.. etc. This scent is truly unique and truly unisex. I find most unisex perfumes to lean too far in either direction, but Beast Mode's balance of spice and the delicate, airy floral element make it special in that regard. Although the scent is so singular, it's a go-to for environments where I don't want to stand out - something I'd wear to work (my other "don't mind me" go-to is Clean's Solar Bloom, another supposed unisex that leans WAY feminine!) It's mellow on the skin and doesn't have strong sillage. It's unusual enough that some folks may inquire about it, but subtle enough that you won't have people moving away from you on the train. I like to wear it around the house, too. There's something sharp and no-nonsense about it that makes me feel confident and energetic. I'm happy when I get to support independent perfumiers, and so I hope Chris keeps sharing his brilliance with us. I highly recommend ordering a Studio Series set. Not only will you get five fascinating samples, but there's always an accompanying written piece that gives context to the work in the world of perfume and the world in general. The last set had a great essay on the cultural background of perfume, de-centering Western concoctions and supremacy. Smell great and learn something? Don't mind if I do.

I think the name is a little joke, because this is not a big, rough beast, in fact it's a rather elegant, small and smooth creature. There is a great peppery-liquorice opening, which doesn't last long and gives way to a pretty vanilla-tuberose centre. Slowly musk emerges but the sweetness never leaves. When I tried it a second time, I got the same development initally except that the liqourice started to return hours later, so the ultimate drydown was more like combination of the opening and what I had thought was the drydown (soft musk) and it lasted a lot longer, although very subtly and close to the skin. This has almost no projection, like it's your secret. The first time I tried this it struck me as very soft and feminine. The second time it seemed still very soft, but more that is was *clean* - it brings to mind freshly laundered sheets but without the blatant kind of synthetic or aquatic elements that are often used to create that impression in scents. It is, as with all Chris Rusak's creations, very clever. I am also backtracking on it being feminine; it now seems more truly neutral to me. It's just so nice an experience that I will certainly wear it again, particularly in springtime, the season for which it seems to be made, even if it's my least favourite from Chris Rusak and certainly not something you want to wear if you want to make any kind of an impression.

Stark, cold, soft, and distant. It opens with a blast of anise and black pepper and smooths out into a smell of chilly Italian pizzelle cookies (the ones with anise). Its unlike any other fragrance I've tried!

For the first ten minutes after spraying this is unbearable for me. Like a menthol mace. Then it dries down and the licorice and pepper emerge atop a vanilla base. And I can’t get enough of it. It’s amazing.

A peppery/animalic opening, followed by a creamy tuberose, with subtle support of liquorice. A great unisex tuberose fragrance. Unfortunately, from Rusak, I would expect a bit more creativity, and if not, at least decent performance. Creativity is subjective, but low performance at that price point is not excusable. Because of that, it will only be "ok" for me. Had it costed half the price, or had it shown better performance, it would have got a "like".

Chris Rusak’s Beast Mode is a scent that I don’t hear a lot about from the hoi polloi, but I’ve heard enough from niche bloggers that I consider perfumista royalty to pique my interest. Exactly what I heard about it, I couldn’t tell you. I guess the name itself stuck with me. The site describes this fragrance as a “minimalist weirdo. A creature of deception. Perfume nerdery” and while I don’t actually know anything about this perfumer, I will say that this nondescription captured my imagination and which evolved into a little crush. The sort of obsession that you develop on someone you glimpsed on the subway reading a dog-eared copy of a book by your favorite author, in this case, let’s say creepy Japanese manga artist Junji Ito, and then you had a series of unsettling dreams about them, so you wrote an ode to this stranger in the local alternative paper’s missed connections section. And like Japan’s most successful and lauded horror author, Rusak has injected an extraordinarily potent amount of weirdness into this scent. Beginning with a mundane peek into the spice cabinet, you are subjected to a surreal descent into madness featuring fenugreek’s uncanny curried maple syrup-ness, a dry, itchy tingle of salty musk, an enigmatic spike of aniseed, and an oily conflagration of black pepper. I can’t make heads or tails of this scent, and as a matter of fact, I like to imagine it as a many-headed, rattle-tailed beast, much like its very name. It’s truly one of the most eccentric and singular fragrances I have ever sniffed and I stand in admiration of its sublime strangeness.

This is a magical and ever-morphing scent. Every time I have applied this to make some notes so I can compose a review it presents itself in a different manner. Enchante called it "a changeling" in their review and I'm totally on board with that. The first wearing it was very, very peppery, musky with an animalist vibe. Next outing I experienced more of the tuberose and anise with the pepper peeking out here and there and a more cozy, softer musk note. I used up my 2ml sample and went back for a bottle because I couldn't imagine missing out on wearing this over and over and over. So wearable and intriguing.

"Beast Mode" is about a Tuberose fresh cut. It's very greeny tuberose like in a plant nursery, as i can barely smell anything else but fresh grassy as a supporting note & maybe some raw licorice or wood in general! I had high hopes for this blend but it turned something cute rather than amazing! i wouldn't mind to have a full bottle of this but it's more of 50-50, besides, i didn't like the name, i'd rather name it "Ancient Library". Cute.

This one was my least favourite from the line, I must say... It's pleasant, no doubt about it, but it just lacks the innovation and creativty. Or, possibly more accurately, it's not as innovative and creative as other scents in the line... The ambroxan paired with the pepper works to some degree, but it's not a homerun. I wish the licorice and floral elements were more pronounced and present... Anyway, it's nice, but not for me...

A contradiction in terms. The name is clearly a paradox and, one supposes, intended as such. Civet? I’m not really sure if that is the beast being alluded to. Aniseed astringency early on, underwhelming the rest of the time.

Question: "Tempered by true civet" So, did the makers of this perfume go out and harvest civet droppings like what's done with hyrax... or did they use civets in captivity?