Just got through my first listen and I like the album!
Real strings definitely add to the last two songs, River is surprisingly poppy (the first half anyway) and Mikael's raspy vocals are cool in Moon Above, Sun Below.
I got the latest issue of Soundi (a Finnish rock mag) two days ago and there's an interview with Mikael. Some interesting bits:
-The article begins with a conversation between Mikael and Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) - they were playing at the same festival in Finland in July. Mikael reveals Dirt was the first CD he ever bought, and Cantrell says he saw Opeth live when they were touring with Mastodon and he was hooked immediately.
-Axe and Mendez rehearsed together for two weeks at the latter's home in Barcelona, and they arrived in Wales a couple of days before Mikael. By the time Mikael got into the studio they had recorded their parts for six songs already. As a self-confessed control freak Mike was like "what the hell", but after listening to the tracks he was blown away.
-Mikael and Steven Wilson had a fight over some vocal effects that SW thought would ruin Faith in Others, but they eventually reached a compromise.
-The working title of MA,SB was "Floyd", as the first version of the song was heavily influenced by the first PF album. Fredrik thought the song was fantastic, but Mikael reworked it almost completely, and when Fredrik heard the new version a couple of weeks later, he said "if you can afford to throw melodies of that caliber away, this must be one hell of an album".
-The working title of Eternal Rains was "Scott" (after Scott Walker), while Cusp of Eternity was called "Zep" after a drum beat reminiscent of Immigrant Song.
-Mikael admits he has a tendency to worry too much about all kinds of things, and he jokes that if Manowar are "warriors of the world", then Opeth are "worriers of the world".