Some reviewers have noted the Axiom house sound includes a emphasized (hot) midrange which does come across as "forward".
What positionings of speakers/listening have you tried? What does your room look like? Does your music provide a soundstage on other systems? I trust that you know enough to set up the receiver correctly.
A typical set-up, with speakers about 3 feet from front and side walls and sitting near the opposite wall should provide enough room for a soundstage to develop.
If not done correctly, multiple drivers plus crossovers can easily result in a speaker design that cannot image.
OTOH the miking/recording process for "loud" rock music is completely artificial. What I mean is that each instrument/voice is miked separately to a different channel and mixed down after the performance into two channels. The producer determines what the mix down sounds like. In this age of low-fi, earbuds, competition with thousands of media sources, and stimulus overload the marketing pressure is on to have the final recording uniformly loud and very forward.
IMO the biggest challenge in audio is quality of available recordings. Small ensembles of unamplified music have the best chance of being properly recorded (and they're typically small market genres so the producers are far less pressured to mess with). At the other end of the market pop, rap, and rock cater to teens who have been exposed to TV, video games, car radios, and other very low-fi sources.
