Music by Year, 2010–present

The fact that a publicly-editable site like Wikipedia has "heavy metal" listed off to the side, along with several other genres, is hardly a definitive classification. Even the first sentence of that very article states "Van Halen was an American rock band". I've been listening to metal for over 3 decades, and have had this conversation countless times with other fans (and non-fans), and can conclusively state that Van Halen are *not* metal. I'd even edit the Wikipedia article myself to exclude that, except that some clueless rando would undoubtedly add it back. There's no doubt that Van Halen are metal-adjacent, and that Eddie's guitar playing was highly influential upon future metal guitarists. But there's a reason that even on Wikipedia, the first sentence of articles about Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, or Slayer say they're metal bands, whereas the articles about Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, and Guns N' Roses classify them as "rock" or "hard rock".

If heavy metal is listed as their secondary genre, why would you describe them as a heavy metal band in the question? They aren't really associated with heavy metal, and hard rock is listed as their primary genre anyway, so it makes more sense to just call them a hard rock band.