I have heard exactly one of their songs on the radio, which made me youtube them. These guys are freaking amazing, so why are they playing in nightclubs?
This was the song that sent me on my youtube scavenger hunt. Apparently they have 5 (or 6) albums out, and none of them have gotten huge national success. What’s the deal?
Because people hear the name and think they’re a prescription antihistamine? 
If that song is representative of their music, perhaps it’s because there are dozens of bands with that same sound. It’s generic. It has been done to death. Plus, the singer is creepy. He looks like a 60-year-old man wearing a wig.
This is so common. I like some fairly obscure music, and I often wonder - because I think they’re so amazing - why no else has heard of them. There’s usually a good reason: to be huge, they’ve got to walk a fairly middle ground.
I too think they’re generic but I love their music. Why can’t they be more popular when other generic bands that suck are popular? Just because their music is an amalgamation of every wimp-rock trope in the past 10 years doesn’t mean their music isn’t well-written, well-played and sung, and has great lyrics.
Very generic. Many other bands sound the same, have well-written, well-played and sung, and with great lyrics (not that the lyrics here seem all that great to me).
You’ve got to stand out in some way if you want success. As for the lack of popular success, that’s probably due to music downloading and file sharing.
They’re pretty popular in the Tampa Bay area, but then again they’re from the Orlando area. I wouldn’t necessarily buy one of their albums but I have seen them a couple times and they were great. As others have said they don’t really have anything going for them to differentiate themselves(well, except that they’re a Christian band but I don’t think that has anything to do with their sound) but I do love the song you linked to.
It’s kind of funny, how you say they’re not mainstream enough, and the poster above and below you say they’re too generic. If you ever wanted a demonstration of how no two people hear music the same, there you go.
There’s certainly an open question about two of the three, where it’s just a matter of degrees for me, but the only popular musical artists in the past 10 years to come close to them in the singing department is Panic at the Disco.
Actually, come to think of it, past 20 years (but then you’d have to include Bjork). Which is sort of sad: they’re not that great. Off the top of my head, Park, Promise Ring, and Emiliana Torrini blow Panic and Anberlin out of the water but did not achieve huge mainstream success (while Bjork has the potential to be the best singer ever in history but wastes it in doing whatever the hell she wants instead of classic trip-hop diva, which is her prerogative).
Well, the lead singer is a professed Christian and two of them are named Christian and they cover Christian themes in a handful of their songs but they still insist they aren’t a Christian band 
Actually, I think it might have something to do with their sound. Or maybe not. You see, a couple months ago I was on a road trip and I accidentally tuned to a couple Christian stations and most sounded like a cross between what I had thought Christian rock was, and Anberlin. Which means that either Anberlin was influenced by the sound of modern Christian rock, or the opposite, that Christian bands jumped on the bandwagon of a band that was somewhat like them and was achieving modest success.
It’s also a demonstration of how hard it is to really get over in the music business. Success is inherently contradictory - you really do have to do what everyone else does, differently. That’s a very small window to fit through.
It’s a question of definition. It sounds to me like just about any other group working in the genre today. Same Ramone-influenced guitar strumming, same timbre of voice, same chords that everyone else uses. They do it well, but there are many other who can do it just as well. They don’t stand out. There’s nothing about that song that’s any better (or different) than dozens of other groups.
So they get lost in the noise.
Admittedly, success in music these days requires you sound like everyone else. But you need to do it a little bit better than everyone else to be a success. This group does not. They’ll get a small following, but will not attract others who like a band that sounds exactly the same somewhere else.
A few of their songs have come up for me in Pandora. Decent enough, but not quite gripping enough for me to go seek more of their stuff out.
If this song had come out in 2002 or so it would have fit into radio rotation without really standing out too much. It’s not that I think they’re bad, it’s just that they’re more of the same to me. If I heard them on the radio I wouldn’t change the station, but I wouldn’t really seek them out either.
I think it’s partly because they’re played on all the internet Christian Rock stations. Those sort of bands often don’t get as much play on mainstream stations as they might otherwise. That I can remember, only “Paperthin Hymn” got any play on stations I used to listen to before giving up on broadcast radio (I got a cd player that plays mp3s and StationRipper four years ago, and haven’t listened to radio since).
Yeah, what everyone else said.
My only reaction to the video was, “Ewww, what a disgusting bathroom.”