Uppercut Monster Hold Pomade Review

Uppercut is one of those brands that I haven’t had any particular preconceptions about, yet have been anxious to try out. PomadeShop were kind enough to send me a tin of Uppercut’s Monster Hold, which is supposed to be their strongest hold. Thanks Stan! Uppercut has three other pomades, namely the Uppercut Featherweight, the Uppercut Deluxe Pomade(which is waterbased), and the Uppercut Matt Clay. Check them out here.

First of all, the tin itself is a bit different than your normal pomade tins. It is flatter and wider, and has a twist-off lid which I feel is quite neat. Keeps stuff tidy and clean. Further, the tin-art is pure awesomeness. Black/White/Red colorscheme is always killer, and in addition, you have Frankenstein’s monster with a sweet pomp on the front. If it can hold his stiff-ass hair, it can hold anyone’s, right? The ‘shine’ in the background and some of the details is not painted (it’s just the metal ‘color’ from the tin), which makes the art pop even more and give off a nice flashy effect. Truly an eyecatcher, this one. And although I appreciate the vintage, classic-looking tins like SGB, Murray and Dax, i kinda dig the newer designs like Uppercut, Mr. Ducktail and Schmiere as well. I see no need for me to side with either one type of design

On the side it says “Brutal Staying Power” with some added flying bats. Well, we’ll see about that

On to the review!

Smell and Texture
If you didn’t get it at first, this is a petrolatum-based pomade, with added microcrystalline wax and beeswax, and finally some lanolin for shine and haircare. What I first noticed, is the pretty discreet scent. It definitely has that petroleum-like odor, but I also smell some honey in there somewhere. All around the scent is masculine and clean. When you apply the pomade to your hair, the scent almost disappears, which I don’t particularly mind, although I appreciate a little left for the ladies, if the scent is pleasing

This type of texture is a first for me, as I’m not used to wax-heavy pomades. It’s creamy, but still firm and a little fibrous. No problem getting out a proper amount for your specific purpose. Even my lady dug into the stuff (and that’s a first)! When you start rubbing it between your palms, the pomade changes, both in color and texture. it goes from this creamy yellow, to a white, very fibrous substance. I don’t quite know why this happens, or if it has any big impacts on styling or not. We’ll see as the review progresses.

Hold and Styling
As I have never tried pomades this wax-heavy I started styling with a modest amount, just too see how the products behaves in my hair. As usual, i started fresh, without any other products in my hair. I usually style with towel-dry to damp hair, but as the tin said “Apply to dry hair,” I went completely dry for this one. New territories are scary…

I found the modest amount I first applied to be lacking, so I went for another scoop and applied it to my hair, making sure to distribute it thoroughly throughout. After a couple of days, trying different amounts, I found the right quantity and got to styling.

This stuff is all-round pretty easy to style. It’s smooth and dextrous in your hair, and provides lots of hold. My hair is pretty short at the moment, but I got to basically max pomp-height if I wanted to. Now, my specific head of hair has lots of bounce, volume and height on its own. What Uppercut Monster Hold does for me, is add lots of bounciness. That means, I had problem getting the hairs to lay down where I wanted them to. It also gave me less control of my pretty harsh waves. As you can see from the photos, this is not very noticeable. This is mainly because it happened throughout the day. So, with increased bounciness and less wave control, it all adds up to me having to re-comb my hair a lot. And yes, I do prefer pomades which makes my hair malleable and not stiff, but this is too much at times. I could literally feel my waves pushing the wrong ways and messing up my -do; Especially in warm weather.

As for the shine, it is pretty damn sweet. It has more of a smooth, dampened shine, than your all-guns-blazing soft pomade shine, but i love it. The pictures below doesn’t give it credit, mind you.

What I tried after a while, was to add a little bit of Dax Wave and Groom, to sort out the wax overdose. This kinda fixed some of the problems, but also took away a lot of things I particularly liked about Monster Hold, like the shine.

Uppercut Monster Hold has so many great things about it that i thoroughly enjoy, but wave control is a must for my kind of hair. I do think, though, that for people with thick hair, and just a little less waves than me, this could be bang on the buck!

Summary
The Uppercut Monster Hold is no doubt a product made with care and quality ingredients. It’s a classic product, with all you need for old school pomping, and probably great psychobilly hair if you’re into that. I don’t know how much of a recommendation I can give though. All the Uppercut products are ridiculously high priced, and the Monster Hold is three times the price of Dax, Murray’s, B&W and even Mr. Ducktail’s big-ass tin (price per 100 gr.). One thing I also noticed, when checking out the products on PomadeShop, is that the Monster Hold has an expiration date of only 12 months. Sure, that’s no problem if you only use a couple of tins altogether, but for me who like to use several different products, it’s pretty bad. Most classically made pomades can last practically forever.

Hope you liked the review and check out the giveaway on my homepage/facebookpage.

See ya!

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