I'm probably in the minority here, but I personally like tracks mastered in a certain 'sweet spot'. For metal and rock this gives the material added excitement and saturation. I almost always find I mix subconsciously with the drums up, to compensate for later slamming, and whenever I put the faux limiter chain on to approximate the end sound, it almost immediately makes the mix sound better.
I think ~-10dBRMS or so would be cool. Just back things off so you don't have to deal with audible clipping, but still loud enough for that saturation and excitement effect. Around there you still have enough headroom for the drums to punch, and if you don't, chances are the mix is out of whack.
One thing I really really love about absolutely annihilating a mix during the mixing process is that it teaches you to mix in a spectrally and dynamically balanced way. If your mix is out of whack you will get clipping, smashing, all kinds of crap. But if you've actually controlled the mix it will cruise along fine. This ultimately makes the ME's job easier, and provides you with a better mix to boot. I used to feel bad about my habit of doing this, being told consistently by certain people that it was 'incorrect' but now I realize it's truly one of my strongest assets, and unless I find a better method of getting the same effect, I won't drop it.
I wouldn't suggest this for genres like Jazz, Blues, Classical etc. of course. But for pop/rock/metal music, where the compression and saturation is a requirement of the production to convey the energy of the music, why not? It's like getting a preview glimpse of the record as it's done, which ultimately means you leave less tweaking to mastering and have more control over your product (unless the ME is over-zealous, which unfortunately is the case a lot of the time).
Anyway the way this relates back is that I think dynamics are over-rated, for popular music genres anyway. I listen to a ton of soundtracks and classical, and I fucking HATE having to ride a volume knob the whole time. What if I'm on the couch, or don't want to bother the neighbours? So the quietest parts I turn up to hear well, and then the dynamics shoot up and start annihilating my walls. When I'm sitting there watching the orchestra perform in a hall? Hell yes, dynamic away until I can hear the next dude's stomach gurgling louder than the strings, but at home or in the car? There is a fairly high noise floor almost wherever we are. At home there are usually noises to contend with. In the car, especially. A good mix, to me, should be creating those dynamic movements more with wide swings of density rather than SPL. If you can approximate changes in loudness with layers, or lack thereof, rather than actually swinging all over the place, you have something that can be appreciated in more environments in a less obtrusive manner.
Most musicians that champion the fall of the loudness wars, I don't think they even know what they are hoping to gain. Do we really want rock and metal CDs that sound like the early 90s? I don't. Modern productions sound better. Part of the reason they do is because they have to be technically sculpted so well to deal with these intense mastering chains. I'm not saying 'master everything at -7dB, yeah fuck all dynamics!'. I'm just saying, keep it in perspective. Try to get the best of both worlds. Don't swing too far in one direction or the other, as there is almost always a happy medium.
