Hora de la Verdad Sombra

Senyokô Paris Hora de la Verdad Sombra, or, what happens when the bull wins in the arena. First, I want to apologize for not taking the proper time with this perfume upon my initial encounter and giving it a mediocre rating. I tried it along with many other things while in a rush, so at the time, it struck me as highly complex and well put together but not very original, as it made me reminisce a couple of other compositions in this vein. After coming back and spending more time with it, I confess that I was wrong in my initial assessment and that this is a tremendous achievement from the nose (Euan McCall), not only in terms of structure/complexity but also for how well it captures and falls in line with the theme/story behind the composition. Telling a good story and making a proper perfume to follow through seems like the summit to reach for all who venture into creation, but rarely do they meet. They do here, and oh, how poetically. A dance in the arena, between man and beast, skill and sheer strength, light and dark, is how the perfume unfolds, and in the end, darkness wins. Honestly, it leads the game from the beginning, but the light fights it heroically till the end. The perfume is built like that. You have elements that represent the matador (light) and the ones representing the bull/beast (dark). There is an almost annoyingly well-calculated balance in how they interact and how the darker ones always seem to win by an edge. As a whole, the perfume fits in the leather genre, although it feels like an oversimplification as it spans further, and the accord itself is rather unique. I am a sucker for leathers and will always be keen on adding another to my collection if it strikes me as original enough, which is the case here. A rough and rugged leather accord. A garment pulled all over the arena, now bearing a dusty, sand-like smell, and later left into a smokehouse to fumigate and garner extra flavor. The smoke accord comes across as gasoline. I look over the notes and can't place how that came to be. I see birch listed, but it's not that kind of smokiness. A dusty and worn leather that stenches of gasoline. That's the accord, but as mentioned, there is more going on the sidelines. This leather theme sits at the heart of the perfume. The top starts brutally with a vivid blood accord that might be the combination of saffron and spices. It lasts briefly, like getting a heavy hit to your nose and tasting the blood shortly after. Once it dissipates, I get this hazy combination of spices and herbs, the beautiful note of saffron, and the underlying florals. There is a persistent dustiness to the entire composition, present from the opening and lasting through the dry-down. A mineral and dusty texture that I attribute to the labdanum and the hyraceum. And the latter is sublime - one of the best uses of this controversial and highly addictive (for me) material. In the heart, the described leather accord takes center stage, complemented by slightly green and floral nuances, with the rose being the most prominent. It lasts a decent amount of time before finally making its way to the base, where resins and musks take over. As I said, hyraceum is one of the major players in this perfume, being exploited to the max. Noticeably, the more mineral-like facets that it bears are cleverly used to suggest the sand in the arena. There is civet and castoreum also, therefore it gets rather dirty in the dry-down, but it never crosses the line. The resins feel warm and only slightly sweet and smoky with the everlasting dustiness from the labdanum getting through. I feel the perfume unfolds like this - the opening is the blow. Blood and the aromatic-floral part representing the matador burst and gradually fade away. The heart represents the triumphant bull. The dry-down feels like the sun going down over the arena while the scent of the fight lingers in the air. It is a highly evocative and clever composition that needs time to grasp and appreciate. One of the best story-telling perfumes in recent memory. IG:@memory.of.scents

My god, this is incredible. It opens with leather, a touch of flowers, and a whole lot of actual shit. It's straight up fecal—like animal farm, cow shit everywhere fecal. And then it starts drying down. Within 15 minutes the extreme fecal notes take a step back and become a beautiful animalic foundation on which the florals can blossom without becoming overpowering (which is SUPER common with florals and the reason why I usually very strongly dislike them), wrapped in a really natural leather accord, with a very slight sweetness that comes and goes. This is honestly everything. The most fascinating perfume I’ve ever gotten to smell. The push/pull between pleasant and disgusting is SO intoxicating and well balanced in this. An absolute work of art while still being perfectly wearable for the right person/personality. Got only a sample but am getting a full sized bottle ASAP.

This is, at first, an aggressive scent. The animalistic qualities are profound and actually quite shocking. After I initially sprayed this, I hesitated for a solid beat about if I could handle it. But it grows on you; there is something erotic about the animalistic, bloody, leathery power of this perfume. I can imagine this would be extremely off putting to catch a wiff of in a crowd and for that reason I adore it. Strange, intensive, overwhelming—a constant back and forth between incredibly arousing and deeply offensive. A grunting scent which is followed by a gasp of florals. Nose behind this, Euan McCall, is also behind Jorum Studios, likely my favourite perfume house. The capacity for McCall to convey conflicting, intense and overwhelming scents in a strange harmony is unparalleled and perhaps pushed to the extreme here.

This is one challenging scent. I personally love it, at first spray it fills my bathroom with a strong raunchy zoo smell. This is my first animalic fragrence and my god does it deliver. Under that I smell a really strong incence, like a headshop burning one too many sticks with the faint smell of (covered up by axe body spray) cannabis on the employees. The most pleasant interaction I've had with this was it transferring to my black cashmere turtleneck, waking up with only that on and being the first sensation in the morning in the bedsheets as the muggy spring german weather filters through my blinds. I find a lot of my scents tends to err on the side of smelling like a night after wining and dining and bdsm-ing (in different contexts); this smell really covers those bases for me in a "in-heat" kind of way.

Very fecal and dirty leather. Very similar tò loves tale by Francesca bianchi, Just more civet and less eliothrope. The oud Is fecal, the musk Is pissy, the leather Is gasoline fumes. The birch Tar note Is very similar tò terroni by orto parisi. The hyrax Is not overboosted like in quickie and coffe by Sorcinelli, so It dowasnt smell like a week old uncleaned toilet. I like It because i like civet and oud. Safe blind buy if you like to stink (i like to stink too) Not safe if in any other way.

Smells like I'm a cowboy wearing a sick leather jacket who just got my nose broken in a bar brawl over giving someone a rose in front of her boyfriend and am now stealing a horse to get the hell out of Dodge. The woman in Stéle who sold me a full bottle looked at me like I was clinically insane.

Stalla and civet. The birch tar, the leather and the oud male It smells like muddy poop. Become more fresh and similar to kouros due to the oak Moss thyme and cedar. Not safe blind buy, very fecal. I love It 10/10 although the price.

This is an olfactory work of art. However, it isn't something I would wish to buy a whole bottle of and it's not exactly a perfume I would reach for often. Saying this, I enjoyed the experience this one gave me today. It opens straight up with the smell of an animal (a bull, to be precise). Brilliantly bestial. There is the smell of cow dung and of sweat on leather here. It immediately conjures up the picture in my mind of a bull; sweat glistening on its muscular back as it charges forwards, throwing dust into the atmosphere. This takes you to a front row seat of a bullfighting show on a hot summers day. There's a slight sweetness and sticky feeling to this perfume, which goes along with the more dry and dusty tones of the earth and leather. Perhaps its meant to be what the blood note is that's apparently in this? The smoke and woods in this one make it feel even more dark and dusty... like the skin of the bull itself. There's a distinct sensation of the scent making me think of black, brown and red colours here, so I feel the bottle design works great. I didn't get much florals, which I think actually works better for the overall composition and story of this one. The flowers that are in this remain muted, trampled into the earth by the hooves of the bull. If there is blood, something sticky in this, then it is the birch tar. This creates, in the dry down, the scent of creosote soaked into leather, baking in the Spanish sun. This one is really worth a try. I wish I liked it more, as I own and adore La Tsarine by this house, but I'll pass on getting a bottle, even though it is olfactory art.

Good god. It does smell like a barn, especially right out of the bottle. After the dry-down, it's a lot woodier and leathery. There's also a bit of sweetness that I got in deep for. This is the first time I was truly impressed by a fragrance for smelling like advertised. I do like it and I do keep going in for more sniffs, but I can see this being offensive to most humans. I've been on a ranch a lot as a kid, so I may be biased in saying it's tolerable in any way (and I don't dislike the smell of cow chips, so yeah). One probably couldn't wear this anywhere, but I'm now keeping an eye out for a time and place in which I can because I desperately want to inflict this on others -- in a place where they can get away from me if they need to. And it basically all came off with soap, if you're worried about that. Edit: put it on again after a shower and let it sit unaccompanied for a while. I officially love it. Plays nicely on my skin in particular, and I really get the florals now. I'll try to wear this out to a normal occasion after it dies down a bit and see what happens. Edit 2: Actually... I don't know. It needs to be on skin to shine at all, and even then, it takes a long time to become nice. It does not perform on non-skin mediums... Straight barn. Maybe my nose is just tired, but I have to demote this from 'love' to 'like' once more.

knittedmugs review is spot on. "A grunting scent which is followed by a gasp of florals." I asked for the most horrific scent in the boutique (while on the topic of ouds) and they brought out this and said, "It's sold out. There are some real freaks out there." I was immediately repulsed and pushed the blotter away from my face. I almost retched. My boyfriend had the opposite reaction. He loves it. As an ultimate reminder that scent is subjective, when I said "stable floor; manure and blood clots" he said "black metal; smoke, iron, leather in the drying process." We bought a sample and smell it ever so often (though not even he dares to wear it). These days I'm not so much repulsed as I am intrigued... I pick up on the rose and pepper now that I've gotten over the initial shock. I have a deep appreciation for this fragrance AND I would never in a million years wear it on my skin.

Can't deny that i can detect some blood! The birch tar, and the hyrax are forming that blood note with the help of castoreum. It's more of a master splinter's fur smell (from ninja Turtles). Very intense and animalic.

The story of this perfume is interesting, and I do get a blood note when I reach for it, but the blend overall ends up smelling like nail polish remover to my nose unfortunately.

Carbolic soap smell, also a metal handrail on a staircase that many people have touched. Leather seats, hotel lobby.

Ahhh, so THIS is what Sombra from Overwatch smells like? 😂 ¡Apagando las luces!

No, this is what it smells like when the bulls wins.