Hi Bret,
I'm glad to hear you like the new themes. The statusbar is a themed control by us. In Metro themes, it is advised to use whitespace to separate statusbar content. Although in statusbars with dense content, you might want to still add a subtle sem-transparent white separator. We have the +/- buttons by the slider in the main Ribbon demo, so those are still around, but have a flat look in the Metro themes.