you are correct sir.
I had 2 takes of his vocal. The double underneath just got heavier, verb and compression. I also automated when the dostortion send would come on and off (off until middle of verse 1 for example) I Eqd just a little around 1.5 k for a boost and compressed pretty hard with a medium release in the Waves SSL. I bussed in camelcrusher on almost every elemnt of the mix..this added some distortion. I also took a Waves L1, put it on a bus and squashed the shit out of it with a super fast release. I sent a little of the vocals to that. I used
the waves Doubler and pitched one side -9 and the other side +9 and sent in some of that. I used Altiverb for the reverb on a buss. I compressed that rverb a little and shelved out some lows and highs and set that in. I also used 2 delays..one is a stereo delay set to under 15 ms on each side..the other was 8th note delay.
The other thing I did at the end of the lead vocal was use the Waves SSL buss compressor to take off about 8db or so. I used a .3 attack and a fast release i believe.
I automated a LOT in this mix...I think that makes a song breathe more especially on the vocals.
A lot of times, I automate the fast attack knob on the waves SSL strip. U can hear this when the song breaks down with just the guitar on the bridge..I had the fast attack on that guitar and then slammed it back off when the chorus hit.
another thing i did on this song, (has nothing to do with vocals, but you should try it) is I automated the inner kick mic. So on verse 1 it is not really in the mix until the chorus. It's a subtle trick I learned, but if you do a bunch of subtle tricks together they can help make a chorus explode.