So crazy since ive been analyzing this project for some time too. I actually just had it open and then saw this post. Ive come to find out that you shouldnt let the rules of producing stop your creativity. But in this case yeah, they get the end result mix in a different way.

At times its hard to make sense of all the gain staging they did with a utility on every channel. but yet the channel volume is above 0db.
So maybe we are just seeing the in and outs of a work flow that doesnt make that much sense to us.