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Back in the early 80's, bands like SY were called "College rock" because college radio stations (remember those?) were the ones that exposed most of these acts, at least to the airwaves. That term does not signiofy the sound of the bands though.
Then, that type of music was called "post-modern" rock, which is just pretentious as fuck, but kind of made you think it was some sort of advancement on the genero-arena-rock of the late 70's and early 80's. It still described nothing about the music, and lumped together bands like PIL, Jesus & Mary Chain, Pixies, sisters of mercy, who sounded nothing alike.
Then, someone decided to call the shit "alternative" rock, which was more correct as to the place those bands found themselves in, because they were not being played on regular rock radio. they were an "alternative" to the radio bands, in a sense.
None of it defined a musical sound. These terms were all basically political definitions.
Maybe these terms defined the spirit of the acts, but what most of them were playing was just rock music with rock instrumentation. SY may have taken the dissonance of rock, already found in Hendrix, and VU, and countless others, and upped the ante on it, constructing songs composed mostly of dissonance and chaos, but they are still a rock band, drawing from the fountain of past rock.
when people ask what you listen to do what I say. "I listen to good music."
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