Hylnds - Bitter Rose, Broken Spear by D.S. & Durga

Bottle Design:
Kavi Moltz

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In Farbe wirkt die Szene lebensbejahend und froh. Hier wird in den Highlands gefeiert ;) (by Gandix)

Hylnds - Bitter Rose, Broken Spear D.S. & Durga 2013

7.8 / 10 102 Ratings

A popular perfume by D.S. & Durga for women and men, released in 2013. The scent is spicy-smoky. The production was apparently discontinued.
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Main accords

Spicy

Smoky

Woody

Floral

Resinous

Fragrance Pyramid

Top Notes

Embers Wild mountain thyme Cubeb

Cubeb

Green pepper

Heart Notes

Clover

Nutmeg

Rose

Thistle

Base Notes

Galbanum

Metal

Amber

Larch

Perfumer

David Seth Moltz

Videos

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Ratings

Scent

7.8102 Ratings

Longevity

7.980 Ratings

Sillage

7.182 Ratings

Bottle

7.468 Ratings

Value for money

6.616 Ratings

Submitted by Apicius · last update on 04/25/2025.

Source-backed & verified

Smells similar

What the fragrance is similar to

Hippie Rose

Bowmakers Eau de Parfum

Reviews

16 in-depth fragrance descriptions

05/06/2016

8Scent 6Longevity 8Sillage

Silverfire
134 Reviews

Silverfire

Helpful Review 4

A Land to Visit but Not to Stay

Initially, a bitter rose combines with a dank, outdoorsy vibe to create a thick, heavy, oriental fragrance with projection that reaches three feet. The outdoors effect is a combination of pine and musk, accentuated by clover. The result is something rugged, masculine, and aggressive. If I had to guess, I doubt that most women would enjoy wearing this. I liked it, but didn't love it, and that was because it proved simply too strong for me. Even with only two dabs to the wrists, I felt overcome by fumes. It's a shame, because I truly enjoy the bitter rose and the clover, and I have an increasing regard for the talent of D.S. & Durga (most of these notes I have never seen in a fragrance before).

02/28/2015

5Scent

ScentedSalon
96 Reviews

ScentedSalon

Helpful Review 2

Fleeting Poetry

I see old Celtic blood nourishing a craggy field of grass and thistle. A broken spear from prehistoric times is hidden by the grass as years of rain weather it. A small bitter rose peeks out from the dense brush, a product of its environment where beauty is all around but is tempered by cold and turbulent history.

Apart from smell, the story behind a perfume and even its name is of the utmost importance to me. I adore the whole HYLNDS range for its inventiveness and ability to create a distinct and powerful image in the mind. Though the scent is meant to evoke blood and steel, all I get is a fain peatiness with herbs and a tinny metal note that combined with a faint rose, smells a bit like bitter rose tea. The scent is as fleeting as the Scottish wind and nothing remains but a memory.

02/14/2024

9Scent

DrB1414
282 Reviews

DrB1414

The Blacksmith's Rose

This one goes right into the "successful blind purchase" category. From the Hlynds collection of DS&Durga Bitter Rose Broken Spear. I'd say the most masculine take on a Rose perfume. Many would argue it's not even a Rose fragrance, and I agree. The Rose is a minimal touch to the composition. I like to categorize my perfumes into various families. This one goes on the Dark/Medieval brews list.

An aromatic, bitter Rose is thrown in the pot with thyme and wildflowers, put on high heat, and left to brew. The armory chamber is dark and lit by only a few oil lamps. The oil smell permeates the air and mingles with the scent of incandescent metal brought to heat by blazing embers. The blacksmith shines his newly forged swords and plates, occasionally checking his rose brew and enjoying a whiff.
Dark, with a powerful red, hot metal accord, as well as a lamp oil smell (if you ever played around with one of those, you know how it smells like), and the shy aromatic, spicy rose to pop in and out, honoring the perfume's name.

If only the rest of their perfumes from the regular line would achieve this level of alchemy, quality, and originality. A unique perfume that is worth checking out.

IG:@memory.of.scents

02/26/2017

8.5Scent 8Longevity 8Sillage

Yatagan
416 Reviews

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Yatagan

Top Review 40

How the Hammer of the Blacksmith Shaped the Bitter Rose

In light of the good comments from Seerose, who analyzes the scent based on its components, and from Thoddü, who places the rose conjured by D.S. & Durga at the center, I want to share my personal impressions in my comment, which partly have nothing to do with the aforementioned ingredients, but aim to do justice to the fragrance in another way.

The reason I ordered this scent (as a sample) has to do with a spontaneous idea: Since I generally liked the D.S. & Durga fragrances, but there hadn't been a candidate for purchase yet, I wanted to give this one a try again, as it is one of the few scents from the brand that I do not know. So I included it in a sample purchase without having too high expectations. Often, this is a pretty good prerequisite for (1.) not being disappointed and (2.) being pleasantly surprised. This was also the case here.

For all cautious, rather conservative fragrance buyers, for those who cannot relate much to avant-garde scents that are only borderline wearable, here is a warning in advance: When I wore the scent for the first time, my wife left the room. The scent was, for her, hardly bearable. She didn’t want to specify further. So I will not buy it and will be content with the sample, which is actually a shame. So there is no need to worry about my marriage.

As for the background: D.S. & Durga describes the scent among other things with glowing embers and molten iron, and even though such ingredients naturally stem from the imagination of advertising experts and usually have their origin in synthetic compounds, the association that comes with it cannot be entirely dismissed (see my statement). Upon closer inspection, it seems to me that the cause of the sparks, the idea of smoldering wood, and a forge with molten metal comes from a mentholated, medicinally resinous substance (not oud, not oriental, but like a healing balm). Furthermore, I smell the scent (or should we say aroma due to its strongly needle-woody, coniferous aura) of herbs and shrubs in the midday heat of a southern country: There are the Apuan Alps overlooking Tuscany in the midday heat, there are the Balearic Islands, hikes in the hinterland at scorching temperatures, there is Greece, the scent of shrubs and trees under intense heat: something is dripping from the trees and shrubs everywhere and mixing into a sensory impression that in nature is of course more subtle and comes as a faint hint, but here reaches your brain with the force of a blacksmith's hammer. That it smells like a healing balm is not so surprising. Many preparations in natural medicine probably contain not much else.

Here’s another attempt with the aforementioned ingredients: Galbanum, bitter herbs, and pepper for intensification are understandable and describe the scent well, as much as it may be defined by synthetic ingredients beyond that.

I would bet that this bitter rose in the base also contains vetiver (vetiveryl acetate). If you wear Bitter Rose / Broken Spear (what a name!) long enough, the typical modern vetiver variant emerges, which is also present in Encre Noire as its most prominent representative (Sycomore, Timbuktu, and countless others, I will spare you the tedious lists but refer to my numerous vetiver comments), but here it is overlaid by herbaceous-green, very bitter tones and transformed into a new idea.

Seen this way, my headline (as well as my statement) only serves superficial associations (the smell of burning, the smell of a forge, smoldering fire on wood, and as essence: the rose, which I deliberately did not mention). The heart of the scent consists of herbaceous-resinous, bitter substances that give the fragrance a medicinal note without ever appearing oriental. The scent is as occidental as few others that come with such force. And the impact is strong.

Updated on 02/26/2017

12/16/2018

8.5Scent 9Longevity 8Sillage

Meggi
1018 Reviews

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Meggi

Top Review 33

Conceptual Mood Transporters Included

Wax and thyme? - those are the impressions that waft towards me strikingly and straightforwardly from the tester, which (thank you very much!) Puck1 surprised me with.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate after spraying; aside from the fact that the true opening is also very Durga-like, meaning: it gets straight to the point. The thought of glowing spicy wood might fit, although after several tests, I personally think of something that is already cooling down. And plenty of resin.

I also sense a rough base, which will have some patchouli in it. I am confident about this because my wife (the ultimate patchouli bloodhound) expressed her unfortunately unavoidable judgment of "cat pee" in the afternoon regarding such scents. Along with a bright resinous white smoke note - elemi?

Over the course of one or two hours, the smoky quality softens into a more pronounced resinous character. I suspect I know what kind of time dimensions I’m dealing with, as the so-called rose makes its presence felt only very slowly, initially just on the skin. If one wants to call it that. Without any support, I would have guessed at a contribution of scraggly petit grains.

What do I do with the cubeb pepper that the esteemed water lily particularly highlighted in her text? Hmm. I sniffed around in Mr. Schuhbeck's shop in the large Hanseatic city once. Before my Parfumo days, I hadn’t even registered the store, although it has been around for about ten years; now it is a scent note presence library in terms of spices…. However, the variety of cubeb pepper that I could taste there did not seem to me to be an absolutely essential component.

Back to the rose: Only around noon can I imagine a true representative of its kind beginning to emerge; distorted, altered. "Bitter" would indeed fit. However, I think more of sour resin with a hint of citrus astringency - thus connecting back to the petit grain thought from above. I would never have guessed that this perfume could be named after a rose. During the afternoon, a trace of softening creeps in. Nevertheless, it remains sour, and the previously mentioned vetiver hypothesis is not only plausible but worth emphasizing. Besides, one can certainly suspect other resinous-green stuff, with which it goes characterfully and robustly into the evening.

Even more clearly than with the sibling scent "Pale Grey Mountain, Small Black Lake," individual scent note mentions here - beyond the banal-obvious cases like "glowing embers," "molten iron" - are more than just possibly checkable ingredients. Mentions like "thistle (I don’t even know what that smells like!), clover, or larch are, alongside, conceptual mood transporters.

And it works. The listed aroma framework also appears - strangely enough - not at all affected or even ridiculous. This is likely because Bitter Rose, Broken Spear, like its relative, comes across as thoroughly successful and high-quality.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a rose scent, you are wrong with "Bitter Rose," but you should still try it. And everyone else should definitely test it.

More reviews

Statements

44 short views on the fragrance

Danny264

2 years ago

9Scent 8Longevity 8Sillage

Ruins of the Scottish Highlands
past battlefields
between clover and rose
smoldering extinguished fires
swords once struck sparks

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Foxear

4 years ago

8.5Scent 8Longevity 7Sillage

Smoke smoldering from glowing embers in a spicy resin forest. Amber and iron dust sprinkle down. In the cooled ashes, a rose reveals itself. Wonderful.

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Eggi37

2 years ago

8Scent 8Longevity 7Sillage

Battle in herby Scotland
Command of the bitter Queen Rose
Iron sword forged in fiery glow & pepper cannon
Smoking castle

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Delightful

3 years ago

9Scent 8Longevity 7Sillage

From the searing embers
Drops in the bitter smoke
Thyme-pepper meadows
Hot metal
Beaten resinously over conifer wood

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FrauKirsche

3 years ago

8Scent 7Longevity 7Sillage

Sprinkle pepper
in glowing embers.
Herbs by the roadside.
Walking over rose petals.
Passing by
metal sculptures.
Towards the
balsam forest ...

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Sweetsmell75

3 years ago

8.5Scent 8Longevity 7Sillage

Forged from the embers of the spear
Rose pride-
Herb mist-
by the roadside thistle & clover.
In the warm amber rain
I stand here in the dust of the day!

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