Keeping the drums in mono might get rid of some of the unpleasantness of the snare-- or at least make it less of an omnipresent knife jab.

The reason the kick and snare are usually kept mono is so panned guitars (ala just about all studio metal recordings) have their own separate space to breathe-- everything fits together much better, and there's no empty space, either in the middle or on both sides.
That said, I certainly don't mean to naysay experimentation; definitely play around with everything. Just an example, check out the snare on SYL's "City"-- not panned, but not dead center either, it kind of comes at you from everywhere at once but still stays rooted in the middle of things. You can get some awesome effects like that by playing around with all these silly rules

~Josiah
EDIT: Huh, actually, you know what... City's snare just confuses me every time. I think it actually moves around sometimes (in Detox for example). Maybe it's doubled tracked... Didn't think the drums had that double drumming sound but maybe they tracked another snare and delayed/panned it in addition to the first? Fuck, this is so cool, I love it when I can't figure out how something was mixed
