On opening track "Coil", Mikael Åkerfeldt duets with Nathalie Lorichs, who was dating drummer Martin Axenrot at the time.

[4] Åkerfeldt was inspired to write the single "Burden" while listening to the Scorpions song "Living And Dying" during a stay in Turkey.

[6] On Metal Hammer's Critic's Choice Top 50, Watershed was named as the second-best album of 2008 (behind only Metallica's Death Magnetic).

In a fan club interview dated to November 2008, a few months after the album's release, former guitarist Peter Lindgren praised the album, noting that "it was a weird feeling to get a new Opeth CD...that he hadn't been a part of", and that he "had trouble following the new songs at first", but called it "damn good".

The track is also available as a free digital download exclusively for those who pre-ordered the album from The End Records, and to people who insert the CD into their computer via Opendisc.