Screen shot from Converge's 'All We Love We Leave Behind' Album Stream by Jacob Bannon.

( youtube.com / October 9, 2012 )

Q: You guys streamed the entire record before it went on sale. I wondered if you could talk about that decision a little bit.

A: Here's the thing: we exist in a band in a day and age that is all about leaks. It's all about music being immediately listened to once it's created. As artists, we didn't grow up in that time. I grew up going to the record store every few weeks with 10 bucks in my pocket and buying the first cassette that jumped out at me in the rack in the metal and rock world of things. That's how I learned about bands and how I learned about music. I took in one record at a time for a few weeks at a time, and I would know those records in and out. I would know everything about them. I would know the thanks list, the credits, the lyrical content, the subtle twists and turns in a song. That relationship doesn't really exist anymore. We still write with that kind of mentality, because all of the guys in the band grew up in that same time frame of music. It was pre-iPod, pre-portable media. The closest thing you had was, like, a [Sony] Discman, or a Walkman with a mixtape to carry around all day while you were doing things. The way we create is from that mentality. We create for records to be experienced as a whole. Even while we may offer records to be streamed and experienced, we want it to be something that was a little more than an album cover thrown up there with the name of the song. It's still not the full experience. The full experience is purchasing a record -- getting it in the mail now, or going to a record store and buying it -- sitting down with the record, reading along with the lyrical content and being alone with the record, having that one-on-one personal relationship with an artist. I think that's something that's incredibly important. That's one of the most important things for music for me. It still is, and it was as a listener when I was a kid. Even when we're streaming a record and interacting with people online, we still try to get as close to that as possible. That personal experience is everything in music, getting somebody's individual attention. That's a rarity. That was a rarity when I was a teenager. How many times did a student get yelled at in school for not paying attention in class? Everybody wants attention in some way. So, if you can have that one-on-one personal moment with somebody to connect artistically, that's an awesome thing. We try to do that. But it's important to also be aware. We aren't one of those archaic bands that ignores the fact that people download records and people steal records, and they want them as quickly as possible. It is what it is. And we know that that's the world we exist in now. So why not play at least by those rules a little bit, but also do it with our own twist on things, which is to let songs go a couple at a time and then eventually put a stream up of the entire album and show people what we've got.