Club de Nuit Intense Man Armaf 2015 Eau de Toilette

Ladies and gents if you havent tried the fragrance in the last year or so please DONT review it or just mention you are talking about an older version/batch. You are obviously talking about the 2015 or 2016 version which is like three or even four years ago .
CDNIM is garbage today. Not even the 1/3 of the old sillage and performance. I ordered the 2018 batch, because the old good ones areimpossible to find and when i got this i had an average scent (not smoky at all which was the most loved element of CDNIM) with little to none sillage and performance (after 1 hour not even my girlfriend when se hugged me could smell it and i sprayed like 6 sprays on me.
TO ALL THE PEOPLE INTRESTED IN BUYING THIS: Please dont. You will wait for 2 months for a fragrance that was reformulated to the worst with almost zero performance.
Maybe if people wake up and stop fallin in the trap of the old CDNIM success, the Armaf company try to bring back the old loved/most complimented ever batches.
I just want to prevent people from the dissapointment i felt, cdnim is not what it once was

I started gaging...”oh dear god, what the he’ll is this?” I thought to myself after two sprays on my wrist.” How can this be so hyped?” So I put it back into the box and left it to be sold once I had time.

After 2 weeks I just had to try it again just to see if I was out of my mind the first time. This time I went with 1 spray, a bit scared and shocked from the first time. “Ok... somewhat sharp star, definitely smoke in here... definitely birch in here...” I thought and left it on my arm to settle for an hour.
The drydown got a bit sweeter and the sharp start was totally gone and had left a fresh, fruity trace. Now I really started to enjoy it!

For me this has turned out to be a favourite, but only after the first 7-10 minutes. I’m not a fan of the intro, but after that... oh man!
Yes it is A LOT like Creeds Viking (just kidding! Aventus of course), but not the intro, only the drydown. Longevity is around 6-7h for me and projecting for the first 3-4h.

Don’t let the beginning scare you off if you don’t like it at first.

I had Insurrection Pure II for a while, until I just got bored of it. The opening was like a milky pineapple, and the drydown was a simple, acrid birch. But this one is a little different. Right off the bat, it hits you hard in the face with chemicals. BLAM! POW! MOOT! I don't know why I think of Batman, but...Anyway, all of the notes just merge into a single synthetic mess at the top. On paper, the top notes are far more discernible - lemon (obvious), pineapple and blackcurrent - but on skin, they disappear almost immediately. After 5 minutues, it gets WAYYY better. The birch comes out strong and smoky, but I can't say that I detect any florals. Add some patchouli and musk in the base and you've got it.

Basically, it's a more saturated version of Insurrection Pure II with a muddled opening and a super strong and super smoky birch - so you can imagine the performance of this sucker. Yeah. It's damn good. Every time I wear it, I feel like I'm invading someone's personal space. The bubble it creates is massive and doesn't seem to let up, especially in the heat. But the overall scent is just ballsy. We're talkin' Bruce Wayne, alpha male, cunning, domineering, in-charge, quarterback, rugged, sly, confident and a whole smattering of testicular derivatives. Sure, it's less refined than Aventus, but honestly, I prefer it because it's simpler, cheaper and does the same job. In fact, since the sillage is usually representative of like 30% of a fragrance, it might as well BE Aventus. Add a little pineapple from Demeter and voila.

But who cares anyway? CDNI is effing amazing on its own. It's powerful, memorable and superbly masculine. The strong and complex birch is reminiscent of a forest and the patchouli and musk give it a down-to-earth feel. But be careful on the trigger! I remember the first time I sprayed this, I strangely went anosmic to it almost immediately. I thought it was the scent, until I found out it was just me. People were like HOOOOLY cow bro - simmer down, that stuff is BEAST. And you know what? It is. It TRULY is.

I'll start off by admitting to not have smelled the much loved 'Aventus' fragrance from the Paris-based house of Creed of which this is said to be one of the best 'clones'. That said, the hype was one of the main reasons that I wanted to purchase this creation from the house of Armaf. And I'm not disappointed.

Upon first spray I thought I had made another blind buy mistake, and like a previous reviewer, I proceeded to put the satisfyingly heavy yet kind of tacky bottle back in the box. Then, sometime between the 30-60 min mark I got this fantastic waft of smoky yet compelling and fresh fruitiness. I sniffed my wrist 'damn this still is actually not bad' I thought. A few minutes later I sniffed again, 'wow this smells good' and again maybe an hour later 'man, I love this stuff!' I thought.

I received a compliment from a family member who really isn't into perfumes at all 'that smells good!' she said, which was very surprising! I decided to give it a proper wearing out, during the day, and although I had no direct compliments I noticed that certain womens' reactions were more than positive. If I went into a store the female assistant seemed to be getting a little closer than usual as if trying to get a better whiff of me (haha, I'm not used to this at all!), while waiting for a tram a couple of girls slowly walked past me, then back again, seemed to be liking something, unless I'm just so irresistibly handsome (!) I believe it was the scent I was wearing! Perhaps people thought it was 'that' 'C.A.' fragrance inspired by the life of Emperor Napoleon , or perhaps they just liked the smell. I was an odd but interesting experience that day, and into the evening it was a similar situation!

I'm not a fan of the opening blast of CDNIM (it might grow on me though) but after a while it just becomes so delicious, to my nose it really does improve after an hour or so. I've read some rumours about recent batches being quite poor, well mine is from February 2018-made in France- and the performance is superb, strong sillage and very, very long lasting. The stuff will last for days on clothes. I think this is one of the best fragrance purchases I've ever made, I really like the scent, it puts me in a good mood and makes me feel more confident too, it's very masculine to my nose, and has an underlying freshness that lasts for hours (and hours). For me it's not an every day scent though, but perfect for a night out (or if you're in need of a morale boost). A great fragrance in it's own right from Armaf, good job!

honestly this is probably the best value fragrance in my whole collection right now. the dry down is just so good, you get this really amazing smoky pineapple vibe that stays strong pretty much all day long.
it projects like crazy so you dont even need to go heavy on the sprays. if your looking for that famous aventus dna but dont want to drop a ton of money, this is definitly the one to get.