Rasasi Hawas Venom 100ml: The Notes, and What That Pyramid Is Telling You

Hawas Venom is a 100ml eau de parfum from Rasasi, positioned for men. It is the dark entry in a line otherwise built on freshness. Incense and labdanum open it, leather sits alone in the heart, and the base runs incense again with patchouli and vanilla.

That note list contains something most buyers read as a printing error. Incense appears twice, at the top and at the bottom. That is not a mistake. The reason explains more about how this fragrance behaves than the rest of the pyramid put together.

Hawas Venom: the short version

• What it is: A 100ml eau de parfum, oriental-woody, with smoke as the dominant accord.
• Smells like: Dry incense smoke over leather, landing on warm vanilla and patchouli.
• Notes verified from: Two independent retailers listing identically. Rasasi’s own store does not carry a page for it.
• Best for: Autumn and winter, evening rather than daytime.
• Line position: The darkest thing in the Hawas range, and the furthest from the aquatic original.

Rasasi HAWAS VENOM Fragrance Notes:

Top Notes: Incense, Labdanum. 

Middle Notes: Leather.

Base Notes: Incense, Vanilla, Patchouli.

Two independent retailers publish this identically, which is the strongest available confirmation. Rasasi’s own store has a page for Hawas Sapphire but not for this release. The brand-level listing that normally settles these questions does not exist.

What Hawas Venom smells like

Smoke arrives first and stays. Incense gives the dry, slightly peppery resin note people associate with church interiors. Labdanum alongside it adds a sweet, sticky warmth that keeps the opening from turning austere.

Leather carries the middle on its own. That is unusual, and it tells you the house wanted a narrow, focused heart rather than a bouquet. The effect is a smoky-leather spine running through the whole wear.

The base is where Hawas Venom softens. Vanilla rounds the smoke and patchouli adds an earthy edge beneath it. The incense returns in a heavier, more resinous form than it had at the start.

Why incense is listed twice

A note pyramid sorts materials by how fast they evaporate. Light molecules leave first and heavy ones persist, so a single ingredient should belong in one row. Frankincense breaks that rule, and the chemistry is the reason.

Monoterpenes dominate olibanum oil, the material behind the incense note. Alpha-thujene alone can account for more than half of it, with alpha-pinene, sabinene and limonene making up much of the rest. Those are small, fast molecules, and the bright resinous lift they produce fades within an hour or two.

What remains is a trace fraction of heavier sesquiterpenes and oxygenated compounds. That residue gives frankincense its balsamic depth. Noses can still pick it up on skin more than twelve hours later.

So one material genuinely occupies both ends of the pyramid. Listing incense twice in Hawas Venom is the honest way to describe it. A house that listed it once would be telling you less.

Labdanum, and the amber that is not amber

Labdanum is the second material worth knowing here. It is the backbone of every amber accord in perfumery, and almost nobody selling it says so.

Labdanum is a sticky resin from the rockrose shrub. Cistus ladanifer grows in the western Mediterranean, Cistus creticus in the east. The historical harvest is the detail people remember. Shepherds combed the resin from the beards and thighs of goats that had grazed among the bushes. Cretan gatherers later used a rake strung with leather thongs instead of teeth, called a lambadistrion.

Amber in perfumery is not fossilised tree resin and not a single ingredient. Amber is a recipe, built mainly from labdanum with vanilla and a balsamic resin alongside it. Hawas Venom lists labdanum and vanilla as separate notes. The amber accord is sitting in this bottle in plain sight, under its component names.

Labdanum earned its place for another reason too. Perfumers prize it because it resembles ambergris, the whale material that modern perfumery replaced with laboratory alternatives. A rockrose stands in for the whale, and then vanilla turns the rockrose into amber.

Where Hawas Venom sits in the line

The original Hawas sold on aquatic freshness, and most of what followed stayed close to that idea. Venom does not. Smoke, leather and resin put it at the opposite end of the range. Anyone buying it expecting a darker version of the original will be surprised.

Hawas Venom arrived in 2026 alongside Hawas Sapphire, a fruity unisex release, and Hawas Pink, a sweet floral gourmand. Three launches in one year pulling in three different directions means the Hawas name no longer tells you what is in the bottle. Read the notes, not the line.

Who Hawas Venom suits

Anyone who wants smoke without committing to oud. Hawas Venom delivers a dark, resinous profile through incense and leather instead. That reads less medicinal, and more wearable, than a heavy oud composition.

Cold weather and evenings suit it. The vanilla base keeps it from being severe, so it works for dinner and for going out. The smoke makes it a poor choice for a warm office or a summer afternoon.

Skip it if you liked the original Hawas for its freshness. These two fragrances share a name and almost nothing else.