What's The Difference Between Hard Rock & Heavy Metal?

TheKingofVault14

TheKingofVault14

Fallout Fan For Life!
Excluding The Lyricism & Themes of these two genres, can anybody explain to me what the exact difference is?

And here's the thing, I've always thought that bands like KISS, Guns N' Roses, Led Zeppelin, & AC/DC were Heavy Metal, but are apparently they're Hard Rock. I mean these bands are the one's at least for me, that really blur the lines between what's considered to be Hard Rock? & what's considered to be Heavy Metal? So yeah, that's actually where the confusion for me stems from!

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
Early Metallica is heavy metal to me. Heavy metal, music you can headbang to?

I would call GnR hard rock as well.

searching gave me this link:
https://loudwire.com/top-metal-bands-of-all-time/

I haven't listened to most of these. Did like some Korn back in the 90's.
I played the hell out of (cassettes lol) of Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning, and Kill 'em All (Metallica) as a teenager.
 
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TheKingofVault14 said:
Excluding The Lyricism & Themes of these two genres, can anybody explain to me what the exact difference is?

And here's the thing, I've always thought that bands like KISS, Guns N' Roses, Led Zeppelin, & AC/DC were Heavy Metal, but are apparently they're Hard Rock. I mean these bands are the one's at least for me, that really blur the lines between what's considered to be Hard Rock? & what's considered to be Heavy Metal? So yeah, that's actually where the confusion for me stems from!

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
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Humanitys need to put everything into groups and sub group those groups
 
One obvious difference no one has mentioned yet is that Hard Rock has their own chain of bar-restaurants and Heavy Metal doesn't.
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Yossarrion said:
Humanitys need to put everything into groups and sub group those groups
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That goes along with the need to tell other people they are having fun wrong! Star Wars vs. Star Trek, FO1/2 vs 3/4, cats vs dogs, Vermin Supreme vs. Giant Meteor, etc.
 
Well, especially in the early days of Heavy Metal (early 70s) there wasn't a lot of difference between Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. Many bands would start to have more distortion in their guitars sounds, experiment with harsher vocals, more extreme drumming, and "heavier" riffs.

Black Sabbath then would tune their guitars lower, play lots of power chords and tritones and more distortion, and add the occult imagery that many bands later used. They basically started Heavy Metal as we know it, but still, not that much of a difference between other bands that would rather be considered Hard Rock:

AC/DC are basically the quintessential Hard Rock band, and yeah, they sound pretty heavy, too:

But I don't know, the riffs are kinda less "heavy"? Less palm mutes, less harsh sound?
After the 70s, Heavy Metal began to move away from Hard Rock as a genre, and generally bands became more extreme in terms of tone. There was the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal", bands like Judas Priest:

And then many, many other subgenres of Heavy Metal appeared, all becoming more musically extreme in various ways, like Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal, and all sorts of variants of those.
I like how Black Sabbath having fun with occult symbolism finally escalated in the entire norwegian Black Metal scene (which involved murder, suicides, church burnings, and basically every important band having had members in prison at least once).
 
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Nice post.

Well, if we're sharing links, quintessential heavy metal to me.





 
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This is a pretty good question as the two genres are close.

I think of Hard Rock as a sub-genre that grew up in the 1960s, matured in the 1970s, began to fall in the 1980s and pretty much faded by 1990s. I rather like Hard Rock and think of bands like Led Zep, Van Halen, Deep Purple, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Bachman Turner Overdrive, The Who, ZZ Top, AC/DC. Note that some of these musical groups really show an evolution in sound and song. The Who, for instance, went through a vast transition over its career. In the end, I think Hard Rock lost its way although you can still get a lot of some of the more current garage bands.

Heavy Metal has its roots in hard rock, was harder and faster and more emotional, more technical, but it tended to take itself a bit more seriously (there was a lot of humor in Van Halen, ZZ Top and AC/DC), and would include bands like Megadeath, Metallica, Judas Priest (which might be also Hard Rock), Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath.

You might want to check this link- https://bravewords.com/news/heavy-metal-vs-hard-rock-what-is-the-difference
But I thought this link was a better summary- https://musicecho101.com/hard-rock-vs-heavy-metal-understanding-the-differences/

Great question.
 
As a general rule, hard rock is bluesier, with less palm muting and more syncopation. Generally has slightly less distorted guitars, and less bass-y as well. Of course, this falls apart when applied to specific sub genres. I’d argue that stoner metal is more blues-based than most rock, and funk metal is built around syncopation.

Metal is “darker”, with more emphasis on minor and chromatic scales. Metal places more emphasis on guitar riffs in general, as well as drum fills. Then of course there’s the vocals, with metal employing screams, growls, and operatic wailing more often than hard rock.

Not sure why I’m reviving this thread, I just wanted to put my two cents in.
 
Surprised no one mentioned the influences regarding classical music yet.

While, obviously, certain artists and bands would definetly both seek out and incorporate these influences in their music (i.e., "Neoclassical Metal", with bands such as Symphony X and guitarrists such as Yngwie Malmsteen), Heavy Metal undoubtedly has much to thank, for composers which paved the way to it being the style we know today.

With composers such as Wagner and Tchaikovsky, it's not a mere coincidence metalheads are drawn out to classical music (by "metalheads", I'm including both artists and fans of the package, as well as artists who didn't necessarily implement such obvious influences in their music as compared to others, like Cliff Burton). This would ABSOLUTELY make it a huge line between both styles (as well as showing a little bit of the fanbase, but that's beside the scope of the question of this thread).

Vivaldi's "Summer: III - Presto":

And a clear influence of said composition that is found on a Symphony X song:

*Insert "uhhh ackshually" emoji here*
 
Yeah the line is definitively blurry as all hell, and early they were pretty much the same genre.
The dividing line is definitively Black Sabbath, which is considered the genesis of Heavy Metal but is retroactively considered Hard Rock nowadays. Hard Rockers consider Black Sabbath to be Heavy Metal, Metalheads consider it Hard Rock.

I've heard the term "Heavy Rock" being used to classify the bands straddling between Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.
 
Slaughter Manslaught said:
Hard Rockers consider Black Sabbath to be Heavy Metal, Metalheads consider it Hard Rock.
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I remember when I first ever discussed the differences between rock and metal with someone who was far more in touch with the music scenes and I was laughing at the fact he said that nu metal was indeed just hard rock. I was into rock and metal more at that time than now but it was just silly that something called metal was considered rock. Probably the first stepping stone in my mockery of subgenres.
 
No mention of Jethro Tull? They were kinda shoved into the mix of all this, winning the first hard rock/metal award in the Grammys. Them winning kinda started this discussion.
 
Extreme metal wouldn't exist without the various British bands of the late seventies that paved the way. Metallica are probably single-handedly keeping Diamond Head alive with royalties alone by continuously covering Am I Evil.


The influence of 70s and 80s Punk Rock on Metal also can't be overstated. It's no coincidence that Metallica play Misfits and Ramones covers, too. Then there was Discharge who created a unique blend of hardcore Punk and Thrash Metal, in turn influencing countless extreme metal bands later on. (Discharge would soon turn into a ridiculous glam metal band but we don't talk about post-1985 Discharge)
 
Not into it but I had a few friends in love with Discharge. They graduated to heroin I got held back for alcoholism.
 
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