O The Joy of My Spirit!

[Lycanthrope]

O to make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

Do I take this exact photo of you every year, Lilith? Always on a see-saw, always laughing with all your heart. You are the joy of my spirit, you are my most jubilant poem.

Crooked hazelnut and tonka with a touch of cacao and black pine.

Wet, this smells almost a little marzipan-y, but definitely nutty. Hazelnut, yes. Like when you're biting into a toasted one and that top crusty toasty aroma. On the skin, whoa, whoa, egads, that nuttiness gets a little cloying, but then it burns off that first topnote and settles towards a more gentle, warm hazelnut aroma. The tonka lends this a sweetness or sugariness which is excellent. Oh. Now the pine comes back a little bit... kind of like the sort in Golden Priapus, so this is not completely and utterly foody. Ah, there's the cocoa, thrumming in the background. This is pretty gourmand, except for the pine, which steers it away from being BPAL Nutella SN. (... yes please).

I like this, it's primarily forward as a chocolate hazelnut, sparkling with sugar but a little botanically unique with the pine.

Like, chocolate dipped hazelnut crusted pine trees.

Over time, the pine fades, and you're left with a pretty tasty desserty fragrance. Mmm. Nutella.

[DiesMali]

In the bottle: Pretty strongly pine in the bottle, with a bit of a nutty cast.

 

Wet on my skin: Mmmmmmm. It smells like Nutella when first applied!

 

Dry: This is a rich, dark gourmand scent, and it's so delicious I want to lick my skin. It smells like eating Nutella on vanilla wafer cookies in a pine forest. The toasted hazelnut and cocoa are forward in a thick and creamy sort of way, and then there's a bit of sweet vanilla-like tonka adding further to the creaminess, and behind those there's this amazing whiff of tangy pine that takes it from what could be a straightforward foodie scent to one that is that uniquely awesome BPAL kind of gourmand. Yummy. So yummy.

[Convallaria]

Opening: Nutella indeed! After it settles, the roasted hazelnut is in the foreground, with tonka and cacao spicing it up but pine preventing it from being edible. Latter drydown is mostly pine and spicy tonka on me, though, and long-lasting.

Edited September 27, 2016 by Convallaria

[Casablanca]

I recently tried Nutella for the first time, so this seemed a good pick. But often when chocolate appears in a notes list, it turns most of the blend into chocolate. I'm not expecting something different here, and I don't need another chocolate-dominant scent, so I almost didn't get this. But I love hazelnut and tonka and pine. So I hope...

In the bottle, Joy smells like Nutella pine.

Freshly applied: Nice. The black pine sits right up front with the hazelnut and tonka. I'm pleased to find that the chocolate hangs out almost to the side. This mix is really good, at least on my skin. It doesn't smell like the Nutella single note I thought it might be.

The blend smells... like its photo, but less dirty and wood chippy.

The drydown is mainly hazelnut tonka, fading to a hazelnut tonka skin scent, and then just... tonka. It doesn't last long in glory mode, but mmm.

It's one to reapply sometimes, but I'm glad I chanced the bottle.

[Teaker]

First impressions: Soft and fuzzy. Definitely cocoa, but not overly foodie or chocolatey. Reminds me of Velvet and Black Temple Burlesque Troupe. I wouldn't call it nutty, maybe just a hint in the background.

 

Unfortunately this goes a bit salty and unpleasant on me after a couple of hours. Too bad, I really like the beginning stage.

Edited October 2, 2016 by Teaker

[LizziesLuck]

Wet: Hazelnuts and woods. A hazelnut tree? Lol. Oh, there's the cocoa. So a Nutella tree. Not the worst thing I've ever smelled! It's really different. And actually, it really doesn't smell like Nutella - there's nowhere near enough sweetness for that. This is a fairly dry scent. I don't usually like pine much, but I am not minding it here. It's not really wowing me though.

 

 

Dry: Dry, roasted hazelnuts, warm and toasty. A hint of woods, a hint of cocoa. It's nice, but not really for me. I think I would like it better if it was a bit creamy and a bit sweet. But if you're one of those who likes a much drier, less sweet, nutty scent, give this a go! It's really interesting.

[Little Bird]

A hint of pine when first applied, but it vanishes within seconds and I'm left with nothing but hazelnut. It's dry, woody, delicately sweet, warm nuttiness... Not quite Nutella, because the cocoa absolute doesn't want to mix well through the rest of the scent, but definitely a sugary hazelnut spread type of scent with chocolatey qualities.
I really like this. I want to layer it with chocolate blends.

 

ETA:
Ordered a bottle after enjoying my decant and wound up swapping the bottle away. It's powdery, very dry and reminds me of sandalwood. The cocoa absolute sticks to the bottom of the bottle and no amount of shaking has made it loosen or disperse through the rest of the scent. Too dry and woody for me.

Edited January 22, 2017 by Little Bird

[mollison]

Wet: pine! Pine and hazelnut.

 

As it dries: This is a plate of Nutella-flavored Christmas cookies sitting in front of a big, fragrant Christmas tree! It screams Christmas and happiness!

 

Dry: The pine has mostly faded, but this still smells like Christmas! And not as sweet, either. Woody and a bit of hazelnut, this is like a yule log-burning fireplace has been lit at the other end of the room, and you have picked up a cookie and headed over the the fire. This is REALLY nice.

[Soupy Twist]

An uncomfortably strange blend for me. Cocoa and nuts in the bottle — I have high hopes. Goes on as cocoa and pine, which soon start to battle for dominance. It becomes... a sweet pine? It's weird. It starts to turn "perfumy," and not in a good way. I like all the notes in this, but wow, did it not work for me. The "touches" overwhelmed whatever else was supposed to be in it, and those two notes don't play well together on my skin.

[Follow My Nose]

Immediately on my skin, I get cocoa-powder-dusted pine, a somewhat unusual combo but quite pleasant. Then the warm, sweet hazelnut comes out and starts blending and smoothing the other notes together. Like others have said, it's kind of like nutella, but the pine keeps it from being a straight-up foody scent. It's still yummy, though!

Now I think the tonka is coming out and that can be unpredictable on my skin. We'll see what it does.

After drydown, the tonka stays subtle, but adds some spice to the sweet hazelnut. This is a warm, yummy blend, great if you like sweet scents that are more complex than a straight gourmand.

[VetchVesper]

This is all thick, foodie chocolate-hazel nut in the bottle and wet, then pine begins to make an appearance. Now it's taking over. Lumberjacks are eating my Nutella! At this stage, it's just to weird and discordant for me. Luckily, it smooths out after about 10 mins and becomes a warm, nutty skin scent. There are the faintest hints of cocao and pine in the background to add complexity. I don't love it, but I like it enough to keep my bottle and it's different from anything else I have.

[zankoku_zen]

Foodie chocolate hazelnut that dries to a soft tonka with a touch of cacao and pine. It starts off as a foodie blend but dries down to a soft, cuddly blend that I'd consider more of a skin scent. Low throw, good wear length.

[renfair]

First Sniff Impression: Ooh, dark, dark hazelnut.

Wet in Vial: The dark hazelnut, which must be made that way from the cacao.

Drying Down on Skin: This is a really nice one right off the bat. Like a very dark hazelnut chocolate I might've gotten in Germany or something. There is a tiny bit of the pine in the background, which makes the scent interesting and keeps it from getting too foody.

Dry on Skin: Fully dry the chocolate and hazelnut fade to a warm, very light incense, floral, like I'm finding some of the Motherhood Liliths with coffee/chocolate food notes tend to do. It makes it a little bit more wearable. There's this other sort of note that I've noticed pop up in Liliths, that I can't really describe except maybe like "autumn air." It's kind of a fresh, dry leaves, teeny bit smoky scent. I'll have to keep track and see if maybe it's the tonka.

 

Conclusion: This doesn't have much staying power, especially when you consider that the hazelnut and cacao only last for less than an hour. But it's still really nice. I wouldn't mind adding more to my bottle decant when I stop spending money on other things.

[starbrow]

This is a beautiful blend that is totally in line with more recent cacao/dark blends like Night and Judgmental Longhorn: deep and earthy, not intensely foody but more tinged with a deep brown swathe of cacao. O the Joy is softly sweetened and warmed by the tonka (gorgeous grownup vanilla) and hazelnut (a fuzzy nutty note that is tickling my nose right now), then counterbalanced with the blackest of black resins. This barely is recognizable as pine, for those fearing a christmas tree bomb. It's expertly blended to bring some murky depths to what could have been a perfumey gourmand. In fact, I almost smell a little phantom tobacco, if that gives you an idea where the black pine leans.

 

In the end, I'm just not an earthy chocolate kinda gal. Tarantula Fascinator had two of the same notes (cacao and hazelnut, with an undisclosed "fuzzy" note that is probably tonka!) but is overall much cleaner and with drops of plum that I adore too. So between those two, Tarantula stays my go-to cacao-hazelnut-tonka (with bonus plum!), and O the Joy gets a new home. Win win!

[doomsday_disco]

O the Joy of My Spirit! starts off with a jarring, sharp combo of hazelnut and pine, with some cacao (the kind that separates, like in Wulric, the Wolfman) thrown in the mix. The hazelnut and pine end up calming down with wear and become smoothed over by the warm, sweet tonka once it emerges after a few hours. I get starbrow's comparison to Judgmental Longhorn. It ends up being mostly hazelnut and tonka backed by touches of pine and cacao after a day of wear.

 

I like the end result of this, but it's a little too sharp for me at the beginning, as if the notes are clashing together in a perfume-y sort of way. So I'm currently undecided on how I feel about this and will have to retest it to be sure. But it will probably end up being a destash for me since I'm trying to be more strict about what gets to stay in my collection and I'm not sure I want to go through the early phase of the scent to get to the end result.

Edited June 23, 2021 by doomsday_disco

[Lucchesa]

Hazelnut is one of my very favorite notes, and I love this so much.  Lots of toasty hazelnut, a little gritty cacao (this is not Nutella on me), some warm tonka.  The pine isn't obvious at first but keeps it from being totally foodie.  So it's kind of an outdoorsy warm roasted hazelnut with an edge of very dark chocolate.  It's a huge comfort scent for me and lasts all day, though any throw is confined to the first hour or two.  Love!