The 12 Longest-Running Metal Bands That Never Broke Up

These are some of the longest-running metal bands that have never broken up and thus have been active for around 40 years.

Keeping a band together for several decades without taking a break has proven to be a challenging thing to do, as there really aren’t a lot of metal groups that have done it. Many of the first groups that come to mind went on hiatus at least once during their career.

Black Sabbath are a prime example of a group that were mostly on for many, many years — but they also had a few off periods as well. Aside from the many lineup changes they went through (primarily with vocalists), Sabbath weren’t together for a time between 1984 and ’85, they went on hiatus in the late ’90s before reuniting with Ozzy Osbourne and again in 2006 when Tony Iommi, Vinny Appice and Ronnie James Dio decided to regroup as Heaven & Hell.

Of course, Sabbath reunited with Osbourne again and then retired at the end of their final tour in 2017, but retirement doesn’t necessarily count as quitting in their case because it was something they had been working toward rather than a sudden split.

That’s just one of many examples that don’t fit the parameters of this list. Here, we’re highlighting the metal acts that literally never stopped and never went on hiatus, even if they went through dozens of members along the way.

READ MORE: 17 Rock + Metal Bands That Never Had a Lineup Change

Since a lot of metal bands that formed and peaked in the ’90s are still together, we tightened the qualifications even further and stuck with bands that formed during the first half of the ’80s at the very latest. Thus, all of them have been around for at least 40 years.

See the longest-running metal bands that never broke up in the gallery below.

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For more metal history, check out our picks for the best metal album of each year since 1970 below.