Worry Isn't Trying to Be Pretty

At home, Daniel Harvey usually puts on some indie rock or country music to relax. “Stuff like Colter Wall,” he says, adding that he also likes to write and play acoustic tunes in that style.

But this loving father and husband also has a long history of creating grating, heavy music, having fronted Colorado Springs noise-doomers Worry for the past decade. He saves that for the stage, though. “I have a wife and two kids, and I can’t just be blasting fucking Cannibal Corpse while I’m making dinner,” he says with a laugh.

Coming of age in the 2000s, Harvey took a liking to such hardcore bands as Hatebreed and Cursed, as well as avant-garde metal outfit Neurosis, and still considers them among his biggest inspirations, especially when it comes to Worry.

“Really, it’s just been me trying to rip off Neurosis and Cursed for the last ten years,” he jokes. “But that’s the only goal, is be as heavy as we can be without being a rip-off of other heavy bands. That’s really it.”

After coming together in 2013, Worry burst onto the scene with four releases in as many years between 2016 and 2019. The song “Love,” from 2019’s Wisdom Through Shame, also appeared on the 2021 Doomed & Stoned in Colorado compilation. The band’s blend of disorienting distortion and growls skirts sludge and doom territory, but the shorter run times make the delivery more manic than mellow.

“I think that [hardcore] reflects more in the songs’ lengths,” Harvey says. “A Neurosis song can be nine or ten minutes, but ours are three or four. It’s definitely a mixed bag of everything we can fit in there without it sounding so fucking weird that it’s…just weird.” (For the record, Neurosis is pretty weird.)

A drummer by trade, Harvey decided to pick up guitar and step out from behind the kit to handle vocals in Worry. “I’ve played drums forever in other bands and used to tour a lot,” he says. “But I’ve always wanted to play guitar and sing, so basically this was just a vehicle for me to be able to do that.”

But even after so many years doing it, he still sees himself as a drummer first and foremost. “I’m not good enough at guitar or singing to consider myself either, but I was pretty good at drums at one point, so I still consider myself a drummer who likes to dabble in other shit every now and again,” he adds.

While Worry has been relatively quiet since releasing Wisdom Through Shame, Harvey, bassist Christian Gutierrez and drummer Austin Latare are busy working on new material and plan to record an album at Gutierrez’s home studio next month. “We can usually record within a week. That won’t be a big deal; it’s getting it pressed” that will ultimately dictate the release date, Harvey explains.

The album will be the first to showcase Latare, who also handles drums for Denver hardcore punk band Public Opinion. There won’t be any “pretty parts” — as Harvey refers to interludes — either.

“I think every release we had has had a different drummer on it up until now. That changes it quite a bit,” he says. “I very much subscribe to the 'less is more' mentality as far as when it comes to just making a riff heavy. Also, I’m not incredibly talented at guitar, so I can’t just be ripping solos out all the time anyway. We just try to play heavy and from the heart.”

In the meantime, Worry is playing out more, too, including in Denver. The next time you can see the band is Sunday, July 2, at the hi-dive, opening for the Vexing album-release show for Grand Reproach. Heathen Burial and Voideater are also on the bill.

“It’s going to be loud and probably a little messy, and from the heart. We try to play raw and as heavy as we can. That’s basically all we’re going for,” Harvey says. “We try not to play the same set list ever. I get very, very bored with playing the same stuff over and over again.”

He adds that it’s not hard to “run out of riffs way too fast” or be “an exact copy, like every band that sounds like Sleep,” and credits Gutierrez and Latare for constantly bringing fresh ideas to the table and keeping Worry weird.

“There are just enough bands doing it. I’d rather have it be as weird as possible without it being so weird you don’t want to listen to it anymore,” Harvey says. “It’s so easy to write the same riff that’s been written 400 times before you and probably better half of that time, so I’m always open to anyone’s idea to make them work better or the song better.”

All this talk about weirdness and culling the prettiness out of Worry only builds excitement for what’s to come from the self-effacing frontman, especially without an official release date (Harvey estimates that it’ll be either late 2023 or early 2024) and no new singles so far.

“We’re just trying to cut it down a little bit to where we can get the best possible result out of it with no fat left on it as much as we can, while still playing what we want to play," he says.

Worry, 7 p.m. Sunday, July 2, hi-dive, 7 South Broadway. Tickets are $12-$15.