The Montauk Project

[sarielswish]

Breathtaking native flora concealing a bastion of covert government experiments: shagbark hickory, sassafras, black gum, bald cypress, pine, dogwood, wild comfrey, swamp sunflower, and trumpet creeper.

In the vial, it smells like the good parts of a swamp. Dark, damp, green, and blooming. Color, dark green.

Wet on my skin, it's oddly sweet. Overly sweet, really. I don't know if it's the sassafras and sunflower or what, but it smells almost like candy.

10-15 minute drydown - I think the sweetness is from the sassafras, because I'm starting to get an almost root beer kinda smell from it. There's also a floral in there that's kinda making my eyes water - I'm thinking it's the sunflower. Not fond of it.

[ravenscanary]

Source: Fresh decant

 

In the decant: Green swamp. Musty, wet woods.

 

Wet: Bitterness and evergreen. Lots of pine and vine, almost no sense of florals.

 

Dry: A manly evergreen scent with the very sharp cypress note dominant. Not my thing.

[patina]

Impolight posted a picture that captures the colors I get from this scent. I don't actually get that visual. If one came to mind, it was more of a tangled swamp. But anyway, it's got the blue of a twilight sky with dark, murky woods. I have no idea why I get a bluish element to this one, but I do.

 

I like black cypress, it has sort of a gnarled, spicy-wood smell. Pine is evident, though it doesn't take over. I can't separate the smell of sassafrass from anything in here- rather it sweetens the whole scent a little. The dirty-vegetation element here probably comes from the comfrey leaves.

 

If anything bothers me about the scent, it's the sunflower. There's the greasy scent of sunflower seeds which is distracting, but it eventually dies down.

 

All in all, I like this. This is a true "dark forest" scent and I find it more complex and evocative than most. Though dark in tone, it's a fairly soft scent on me. (I don't amp woods.) It can be compared to Schwartzer Monde (though this doesn't have patcholi) or Arkham (though this is far darker).

[Lucchesa]

So I got ahold of 2 Black Helicopters scents recently, and neither one had been reviewed since 2010. Weird, right? Where have they been hiding?

 

Being a west coaster, I am not familiar with many of the components of The Montauk Project. Wet, it's greenery with something that has a mint-like edge to it. Fortunately, the mintiness recedes quickly on me. In drydown, this is absolutely lovely. Something pleasantly floral comes out -- sunflower? creeper? This seems more of a deciduous than an evergreen forest to me; the pine and cypress are very much in the background. It's a soft and sweet forest floor bathed in dappled sunlight; on my skin, it leans towards the feminine end of unisex. I think Arkham is a good comparison if this one is too hard to track down.