It is a very common trend to produce albums with crappy quality. Some consumers are awed when they hear such sound like "Storm" has, they think it's more "powerful". Also, most people find louder sound better - but this is only a temporary feeling, cause the brain gets tired of it really fast (it interprets such sound as white noise).
Find Iron Maiden "Powerslave" album (not the remaster from 1998 or 2002, the first CD edition) and listen to it for a minute. Is the sound not powerful? Sure it is! Do you hear all instruments? Yes, all instruments get their space and are perfectly audible.
Now listen to anything released recently. The sound is always muddy (recent Paradise Lost albums, Velvet Revolver, Iron Maiden "Dance of Death", last Billy Idol's release, latest Stratovarius, and so on) and loud as hell.
It's usually not the fault of the producer. It's not the fault of the mixer. It's the fault of the mastering dude.
Thankfuly, some albums are still produced and mastered well. For example, take a look (or a listen) to David Gilmour's "On an Island". It's recorded at -3dB -- it's silent! But what are the volume knobs for? You make it louder. And the sound just floats... your ears will cherish each second... your brain will produce tons of serotonin
Search for "loudness wars" on google, there are plenty of articles on this subject, with great visual examples of how the sound wave looks today and how it looked before. And no, today's sound quality has nothing to do with it being 100% digital - if someone wants to kill an analog recording, he'll do that (Iron Maiden remasters from 2002 - they suck, the sound is flat and annoying).
Kind of off-topic here, sorry