First post here,
I like both songs:
Ghost of Perdition is very varied and more 'progressive', a lot of elements that never were in Opeth music before, and still it's Opeth and it's good. Also there are hints for returning some elements from Orchid\Morningrise - folky parts and hearable bass.
The Grand Conjuration is good too, I like the heavy riffs very much, and the screams are great. About the length - Opeth has a lot of songs with long fadeouts so i think that the fans can accept it. I can imagine a lot of people doing slow heabanging for the last minutes of the song.
By the way, the addition of keyboards is really cool they add a lot of athmospere and there are no fast 'wanking' solos.
And Mikael has never sounded better, the screams are more varied than those from, 'Deliverance' and sound really 'evil', and the clean vocals are renewed with more singing styles, and not only 'the usual' clean singing we used to have.
Since the quality is pretty bad we can't judge the production but overall it sounds good.
It is good that the material is pre-written and rehearsed,
and I'm somewhat glad that Steven Wilson isn't responsible for this record( nothing personal against him, butI think that the style of the band was pretty limited when they worked with him.)
I will be expecting the new album very much.
Sorry for the long post))
