This is a continuation of the stem mix I was talking about earlier to hopefully demonstrate visually what's going on.
The screenshot is of the 'Blinded' stem mix (chorus), as you can see there's actually more going on here (track-wise) than the initial mix.
A breakdown of the tracks are as follows
Track 1 - A duplicate of the original Stereo drum mix, used as an ambient track (to emulate room mics) set pretty low in the mix with a thick room reverb and a few other goodies
Track 2 - Stereo drum mix
Track 3 - Kick drum duplicate for added punch and presence on the kick
Track 4 - Snare drum duplicate for added punch and presence on the snare
Track 5 - Toms duplicate for added punch and presence on the toms
Track 6 - Distorted Guitars
Track 7 - Bass Guitar
Track 8 - automation clip (flanger)
Track 9 - automation clip (filter)
Track 10 - Lead Vox
Track 11 - automation clip for lead vox volume envelope
Track 12,13,14 - Background vox
Track 15 - automation clip for lead vox stereo shaping
Track 16 - automation clip for background vox volume envelope
Once I'm happy with how things are sounding on this mix it gets bounced down to a single stereo track once again ready for final master.
Important point here is that the max peak on the output gain doesn't exceed more than -3db but preferably -6db so as to leave plenty of headroom for mastering.