It's an interesting subject, this. In the 90's I worked for a PR company that promoted various bands of NMA's ilk, them included. The important thing to remember is that it is serendipity that gets bands a rollout of exposure, if the have no strong patronage from somewhere above, which NMA do not. As such, there may be writers who'd put them in every issue of a rock mag, but if the editor only feels they warrant an album review during the launch of a new product, that's all they'll get. No double spread, no cover lines, maybe a live review. So they could hit all the major rock publications in the UK and still not have a raised profile. But whatever band you promote, the press release and the CD goes out to all the magazines just the same, and everyone at those mags at that point knew who they were. Were they dismissed out of hand sometimes by the staff there? Did nobody at some publications pick up the CD for review? Probably. But I'm sure the bands that got coverage instead aren't complaining.
Of course, an editor's job is to sell as many magazines as possible, not to do NMA a favour, so he's not going to stick them on the cover when Kid Rock is already selling magazines because of his radio exposure, which brings me to...
I presented a radio show when Strange Brotherhood came out. I played WWTG a couple of times, I didn't get any of the audience feedback that popular tracks usually generated, so I don't play it much further. When there's always more good music to play than you have hours in the show, a couple of plays is good for a band no-one is asking you to play again.
Now, I have no idea what the turnover is like for NMA these days, compared to back then. But we could put them on in our venue and sell it out, and the same seems to frequently happen now, so one can only assume album sales are similar, adjusting for how that's changed across the music business in the last 2 decades.
The conclusion I've reached with this band is that what they do (and who they are) appeals to sufficient people to allow their ambient level of success, and that is more than most talented musicians could ever hope for. Certainly for three and a half decades or so.
On the flipside, they also aren't unpopular enough. To pluck some low-hanging fruit, Limp Bizkit (a band who made very bad music) got very successful with an almost perfectly balanced discourse in which they were equal parts awesomesauce and horseshit. If everyone hates you, you can have a cover line. Maybe you can even have the cover. But people who don't like New Model Army just don't like them. They aren't vocal about it, particularly. The tribal rivalry between groups of fans (which the media will always promote because it puts food in their children's mouths) was all but over for the 80s alternative bands by the end of NMA's second decade, and the band never played up to it anyway. That's the stuff that keeps you in the media.
I think also Hopeless Causes should have been a virtual relaunch for the band, re-positioned them in the brave new decade of British alternative, but Sony didn't know what the **** to do with half the excellent bands they had on their books in those days. The neo-mods of Britpop had Paul Weller, Mr. Sullivan could have been that guy for the for the alt-rock sphere. The Almighty were briefly enormous, surfing the same wave as Therapy? and the Wildhearts. Even though LOHC charted higher than Impurity and almost as high as T&C, that link was never made.
Everything except the musician and the noise they make is a story, and NMA have always been keen to tell their own. It doesn't leave much for the media to create.
