I only got this the other day, and I have to say that with my first couple of listens I was a bit disappointed- obviously with the exception of 'Guardians...' as it's an instant classic. I felt that the riffs were a bit generic and 'more of the same' and kind of a flatter version of the last two albums.
So I've been listening to it a lot over the last couple of days, and I can say that I really love this album now. For some reason it took a bit of time for me to get my head into the songs. 'With Oden..' is my favourite AA album, I just think it's a classic, so maybe I was trepidatious about the follow up, despite the brilliant artwork. Best arwork so far, and now I'd say it's my second or third favourite AA album.
Maybe a bit of the massive advertising machine got my expectations too high, which is dumb because AA do what they do and they do it well. Nothing fancy, but damn effective.