Opium carries mourning at a runner’s pace on Dirge. With their latest single, the Denver goth-rock and post-punk band threads funereal gloom through mounting panic, driving toward a fate that feels sealed from the opening bass note. Taken from their forthcoming debut album, Winter, the track arrives with Opium’s first-ever music video, directed and filmed by David Sundine.
Opium formed quietly at the beginning of 2021, finding enough common ground to begin writing almost immediately. Within a few months, the band had secured its first performance at Denver’s Hard Rock, drawing a curious crowd and establishing a local following that continued to grow with each appearance. During their first year, Opium concentrated on unusual venues and distinctive bills before entering the studio in 2022 to record their debut EP, PHANTOMS. Released in April 2023, the record carried their music beyond Colorado and laid the foundation for Winter, which is scheduled for release in August 2026.
“Dirge” opens with a dark, rhythmic bassline whose repetition steadily tightens the space around it. The drums build an anxious energy beneath a separate low-register guitar melody that faintly recalls the tones of a slowed-down version of The Munsters theme, though its descending gloom suits a funeral procession far better than a television crypt. The song keeps moving, carrying its dread forward rather than drowning under its own weight.
The vocal brings an anarcho-punk edge into contact with the macabre drama of early deathrock, giving “Dirge” the urgency of an old-school punk song heard from the edge of an open grave. As the track advances, additional guitar distortion gathers around the rhythm section, increasing the pressure until the initial motif has been engulfed by a dense, abrasive rush.
Filmed in stark black and white, Sundine’s video places Sarah Talmadge at the center of a domestic horror film. Alone inside a dim house, she studies what appears to be a photograph album with a cigarette and bottle close at hand, while mirrors, blurred movement, and doubled exposures gradually pull the rooms outside ordinary time. A figure in bed, a tiled bathroom, and a threatening bath scene give way to refracted faces, cemetery grounds, and an eerily formal outdoor tableau. The final return to the house reveals a body stretched across the hallway as another pair enters through the door, leaving grief, memory, and violent premonition tangled together.
Sundine keeps the chronology unstable through scratched-film interruptions, distorted glass, abrupt changes in focus, and images laid across one another. The effect resembles a fatal memory repeating until it assumes a physical presence, matching the accumulating distortion and nervous momentum of the song.
Watch the video for “Dirge” below:
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