Is it possible for a record to be too loud?

Every cartridge has its tracking limits. Sometimes a record is just cut too hot for the cart to handle and it starts to mistrack. You can try raising the stylus force to the maximum. I have one direct-to-disc piano recording that causes some mistracking when he really hits it hard, but since it's only one record, I'm not going to drive myself crazy.

Short answer is yes. There were/are many recording engineers out there who really have no idea what they were/are doing. Don't assume you have an equipment issue unless it is happening all the time on a wide variety of records.

Indeed, there's no shortage of records cut too hot that are so loud it makes tracking really hard. There's a fine line between enormous and wonderful dynamics and over the top. This is where a good mastering/cutting professional comes into their own.

To further what Diggory has said, in the cutting process, it is impossible to overload the cutter system. The dynamic constraints exist in playback only. It is the engineer's job to understand what can be played back easily and what cannot.

However I have a copy of the LP in question and it plays fine without compression or mistracking (Triplanar and a Grado Sonata). This suggests that your setup is not optimized- the mechanical resonance of the arm and cartridge together should be between 7 and 12 Hz, else you can have mistracking problems.

Another thing that can contribute to this issue is cartridge loading. With moving coil cartridges the effect of loading occurs at Radio Frequencies. However if your preamp is sensitive to RF the effect of loading can be dramatic, and you have described what it can sound like if there is a loading problem.

Thanks for the advice, making me feel a little less crazy.

After posting this I spent a good few hours going down the compliance rabbit hole only to find out that all of the manufacturers weight measurements were way off and my cart/headshell/screw were spot on where I wanted the whole time. At first I thought I was running a bit heavy, around 6hz, but after throwing everything on my scale there was a whole 10g difference from the specs I was using to calculate.