Sohrab The Fragrance Engineers 2017

At first, I considered describing Sohrab in a story, but due to the abundance of ingredients and the very changeable progression, that was not practical. I had never heard of The Fragrance Engineers before; Sohrab is by Prin Lomros, and as an old tester of many Prin creations, it was natural for me to test this one as well. As always, he seems to have thought about how to name the fragrance. I generally find the stories behind it, or rather the process of naming, very good in his case, at least from an outside and rather rudimentary perspective.

Slowly, the resin armada approaches olfactorily. It's hardly noticeable what all of this is. Myrrh is definitely present; the warm, aromatic element is clearly perceptible. Typical of Prin, the Indian spikenard is also there. He uses it from time to time, and here it accompanies the other ingredients. The spikenard is usually noticeable because it has that special, somewhat earthy yet also spicy scent.
It quickly becomes sharper as the pepper kicks in. The interplay between the resin mélange and the two types of pepper is characterized by both complement and overlap. It seems as if a kind of competition has ignited, which the pepper gradually wins, at least for now. It is very intense-aromatic, very defining here.

Now, for my perception, the galbanum appears sublimely. It was briefly present at the beginning, and now it mixes with the pepper, exuding a fine yet, upon closer inspection, distinctly coniferous aura, which may initially seem strange, as the combination is not easy to digest; however, it is also intriguing. In the first test run, I wanted to draw associations with decay and moor, and we are not far off, in fact. Nevertheless, it remains a similarity, not a congruence, and it is precisely here that the differences in this phase of Sohrab compared to Mriga and other Lomros creations lie.

Hours pass, and eventually, the fire dominates. Not a burning fire inferno; perhaps there was one once, but that was a while ago. Rather, it is a memory, a reminiscence of what was. Perhaps these are the flickering fires after the battle in which Sohrab was unknowingly killed by his father. Perhaps the fragrance expresses the dilemma of the story with this Janus-faced fire, on one hand warming, on the other distant, and brings to mind a lonely piece of forest with faded fires, of which only a few wisps of smoke still tell the tale. There was once life here, events took place, but that was, not is.

All of this is endured by the Omani frankincense. Dark-smoky, intense, and latent, it lingers in the air and, although it becomes tamer after hours, it is still not docile. So, Sohrab fades away, leaving me astonished, although the ending seems only understandable. Frankincense as a resinous incense was, of course, known to the Persians; perhaps this suggests and proclaims the end of Sohrab's life. Everything fades, only the ritually burned frankincense remains, along with the memory, the myth that stays.

Prin has conjured something here that I did not expect. Sure, he can do animalic, decay, and all that. Smoke, in general, too. Yet, in this intensity and manner, it still surprised me, including the multifaceted but coherent progression. Very exciting; it will certainly need further testing to determine a purchase. We shall see. Even though the landscape of ancient Iran is surely different (I am not well-versed in that), my mind still projects that very abandoned piece of forest before my eyes, and I conclude with the thoughts I have about Sohrab: Hidden in the depths of the forests.