Yeah, the physical copies I pre-ordered on Amazon UK were £7.99 and £6.99 respectvely, which comes to around 50% more than the price of a single disc would have been.
And again, it's not the money issue that 'bothers' me (to the extent any of this really bothers me, which it doesn't, I'm just offering my opinion on it). If they've done this for commercial reasons, then fine (though I would point out that this is the same band that publicly told their fans not to buy their 'greatest hits' CD because they felt it was a shameless cash grab by their former label). Although (per Jammin's point about the changing market) if this is now to be the way bands make ends meet in a changing industry, I'm not in favour of it. Tour more. Release new music more often, like Steven Wilson does. Be more creative with merchandise. There are ways to make good money in this industry. Releasing an album in 2 separate parts? Nope. Because I ask again, why not go further next time and release a quarter of the album every 3 months over the course of a year?
The 2nd and less cynical explanation is that it's been done for artistic reasons, and while every listener will have their own opinion on how wise a decision that was, my own is that this would have been a better listening/artistic experience for me (only for me; I say again it's obviously subjective) as 1 disc. Even when spliced together, it still only comes to 68 minutes, which by today's standards is a short album, with the new craze being to release double albums, or else packing a CD to its full 80 minutes. I like the musical journey of the whole thing, especially the central part of Blot and The Proverbial Bellow.
Anyway, all that aside - they've made an excellent, excellent album, one of the best in the genre I've heard in many years. It is safely in my top 3 BTBAM releases.