10 Most Important Metal Bands Of All Time
6. Motorhead
It feels a bit strange putting Motorhead down as one of the greatest metal bands of all time considering their frontman's indifference towards the genre. Throughout the band's run, Lemmy Kilmister always stood firm in his belief that Motorhead were just a rock and roll band with no other bells and whistles. Though the core of the sound may be rock-based, Lemmy may have inadvertently created a whole new genre without even knowing it.
Whenever you listen to a Motorhead song, you get this wall of noise that is unlike anything else in the rock world. The amount of sheer volume on display here is so massive that the guitars distort by default, with the drums continuing with a machine gun-like energy. While many bands can claim to be a pretty loud sonic beast, Lemmy's voice is the epitome of heavy rock, with a timbre that sounds like the equivalent of drinking 3 shots of whiskey.
Across albums like Overkill and Ace of Spades, the band ended up not only defining the sound of thrash metal, but have also influenced heavy hitters as diverse as Metallica and Ice-T's Body Count. Lemmy may not have fully embraced the metal tag, but the amount of influence Motorhead has had over generations of musicians has more than earned them a spot on both the rock and metal sides of the spectrum.