Sons Of Asgard – Ash
This sample was sent to me by my friend and fellow blogger Steve.
He hasn’t reviewed Sons of Asgard so far.
I’m getting more and more hesitant to write reviews based on just a single sample stick, but with Ash, it was simple to make an exception because I must have smelled this scent half a dozen times under different names by now.
Sons Of Asgard is a shop for spiritual products based in Glastonbury, England; they also run an online shop.
As the name suggests, Sons Of Asgard are strongly inspired by Germanic mythology; Asgard is the realm of the Norse gods.
On the product pages of the incense sticks, it says that they’re handmade by Sons of Asgard. On their About Us page, they emphasise: ‘Everything with our label (we do sell a few pieces from other creators) is handmade by us.’
All the more disappointing it was to unpack the sample and discover that the style and fragrance were all too familiar to me. I’ve no doubt that these sticks come from the Indian manufacturer HMS, who produce incense sticks for a multitude of brands world-wide. Examples of other English brands include Pure, Gokula and Sacred Elephant; Prasad are based in the USA, and in Germany BERK sell HMS sticks in their Blue Line of their Holy Smokes brand.
For some of these brands, fragrances are custom-made or existing recipes customized.
There are also different price ranges, depending on how much oil has been added into the sticks.
HMS make so-called hybrid masala: sticks made with the masala method are soaked with essential oils or fragrance oils after drying.
Ash must be one of their sandalwood variants.
Here you can see the sample of Ash (top) compared to two sticks of Prasad – Celestial Sandalwood (bottom).
The sticks not only look almost identical, they also smell very similar.
Apart from Pure, I’m also familiar with this fragrance through the sticks called Astral Sandal from Holy Smokes; they also smell very similar to the Red Sandalwood sold by Bhagwan.
Ash cost £5.95 for a pack with 10 sticks; that currently corresponds to about €6.80.
The smell of Ash is nice; an oil-heavy sandalwood fragrance, interwoven with sweet notes of vanilla and coumarin.
In the background, I smell a bit of the masala base, which gives the fragrance a touch more substance.
Unfortunately, while the stick burns out, the burnt smell of the bamboo stick comes through quite strongly. However, once this unpleasant odour has dissipated, a lovely sandalwood fragrance remains in the room.
I find Ash really delicious.
That being said, the fact that incense sticks made by a well-known Indian manufacturer are (apparently by magic) turned into homemade incense sticks that match the trees in the Celtic tree calendar and claim to inherit their “energetic properties” gives the whole thing quite a stale aftertaste.
I’m surprised that a company so carelessly risks their credibility, when HMS sticks are so widespread and have high recognition value due to HMS‘s unique style.
The incense stick industry already has a massive credibility problem with its omnipresent claims of 100% naturalness, and examples like this only add to the issue.
What I find particularly sad is that this dishonesty also diminishes the credibility of people who actually sell homemade incense.