Rock or Metal? – Bands Whose Genre Label We Argue About the Most

Are they rock or are they metal? There are a handful of bands whose genre labels we can’t seem to agree on from time to time.

You may have noticed that a lot of our lists at Loudwire have a rock version and a metal version. That’s because a lot of people love both genres, but some prefer one over the other. And there’s a lot of subgenres to consider within each!

Because there are so many artists who have elements of both genres, it’s challenging to classify them as being one or the other. Plenty of metal bands have songs that have had success on rock radio stations, while there are rock bands that have written songs so heavy they can be classified metal on their own.

One thing is for certain though and that’s that heavy metal was born out of rock ‘n’ roll, which was born out of the blues. Some artists just decided to take rock ‘n’ roll, add some spice and distortion and create a whole new genre out of it. And then metal branched into different directions from there.

READ MORE: Rock Bands That Were Once Considered Metal, But Aren’t Anymore

Check out our video on who invented heavy metal on YouTube, if you’re feeling so inclined.

Listen — genre is not a serious thing and there are no concrete rules on this. It doesn’t matter if one person considers a band metal and someone else thinks they’re “soft.” But since we at Loudwire tend to have debates over whether certain artists should go in the rock list or the metal list, we figured we’d highlight the ones that tend to teeter the line between the two.

What we often consider is the context of the other bands, songs, albums, etc. in these rock or metal lists, slotting them where things sound more like-minded. Are we perfect? Nope! That’s why it’s so much to have these debates and discussions.

We’ll give you one example of a group we debate about: Tool. Some consider them metal, others consider them rock. Does it matter? No, not really. But they’re one of the artists we spend the most time discussing when deciding whether to put them under the rock or metal label.

And is it weird that a lot of hair metal and nu-metal gets lumped in with hard rock? Maybe!

Scroll through below to see other bands in a similar vein.