Picked it up yesterday, listened to it once full volume over the stereo in the living room (yeah baby!) and once on the PC while surfing the web and stuff. Albums are so long these days that I never feel like I get to know them intimately like back when I was in school and spent hours listening to them over and over and absorbing every nuance. Nowadays, spending hours means you got to hear it twice. So the second listen was more to get the songs into my subconscious.
I get what people are saying about the sound and production. It sounds very dense to me, but I don't know if that's bad. It makes the music sound more intense, more immediate, but at the same time, yeah, it gets a bit oppressive after a while and seems to rob the album of the peaks and valleys you really need if you're going to hold someone's attention for an hour or more. The quiet sections are loud, the loud sections aren't much louder, and everything else is in between. I found myself thinking "This will totally kick ass when they play it live" a few times. You shouldn't have to think that way about a song. If it's that good, it should blow you away on the album. And there are a lot of really good songs here.
Third listen will be today in the car, full volume. I'm looking forward to it.