Insensical

Incense is a preparation of aromatic materials, intended to release fragrant smoke when burned. The word incense comes from the Latin incensum, literally meaning "something burnt." It has become a fairly popular element of perfumery, as various types of incense scents are highly evocative. For me, raised Catholic in the 1970s, incense reminds me both of Church and of the occasional cone or stick of smelly head-shop incense my mother would burn on a lark.

Here is my (completely unsolicited) opinion three of many incense scents I have sampled recently.

Etro
Messe de Minuit
Notes: orange, bergamot, tangerine, labdanum, incense, myrrh, cinnamon, patchouli, amber, honey, musk

With a name that translates to "Midnight Mass," I expected Messe de Minuit to smell like church. Instead, it smells like a used bookstore: slightly damp, mildewed paper. It reminds me a lot of a place I used to frequent called Louie's Bookstore Cafe. The front of the place was a little bookstore with a nice selection of literature, women's studies, and art books; in the back was a cafe with decent food, a good bar, the world's worst coffee, and a motley selection of waitrons, some of whom were good friends of mine. Downstairs, a gray and dismal cellar area, were the bathrooms, smelling of damp and mildew. Just like Messe de Miniut.

I smell no orange, no cinnamon, no incense, no myrrh, none of the listed notes except the honey in the drydown. As most honey fragrances remind me of the smell of dried urine, this only cemented the notion of dank bathroom in my mind.

I'm sorry, Messe, I really wanted to like you. I had hopes you would smell like Church, but on me, you simply smell awful.

Creed
Angelique Encens
Notes: anjelica, tuberose, amber, incense, and vanilla

The combination of floral notes, incence, and vanilla all hit me at the same time. The incense comingles with the amber and is soft, slightly funky, and a little bit woodsy. In the drydown, the floral and incense aromas fade away completely and leave behind an overwhelmingly powdery vanillaic amber with a discernible animalic note that eventually becomes simply a powdery vanilla. Meh. Not really what I would consider an incense scent at all.

Comme des Garcons
Zagorsk
Notes: white incense, pine, pimento berries, violet, cedar, iris, hinoki wood, birch wood

At first sniff, this is a chilly and somewhat antiseptic scent, like tongue depressors and bottles of alcohol on a shelf in the doctor's office. The incense quality comes out after a few minutes, still very cold and impersonal, reminding me of the Church we attended when I was in my 20s, the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, in Baltimore. West Wing fans will recognize it from the outside shots during the episode with Leo McGarry's funeral. The Cathedral is built in a modern 50s style of grey marble that more resembles concrete and I never felt any sense of warmth and community within those walls. So it is with Zagorsk. In the drydown, there are hints of flowers, the violet and iris, as if someone made an attempt to bring some life into this cold place. This added bit of warmth is short-lived, however, as the drydown on my skin is right back to the tongue depressor phase.

Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily. I actually like the smell of those strips of wood, however, I'm not sure I want to smell like them.