Heavy Metal or Hard Rock
 

For anybody newish to this genre, I imagine this question is always being contested. But in your opinion what is really heavy metal and what is really hard rock?

Heavy Metal is harder rock and has less soul and blues elements.

Heavy metal has double bass, and hard rock has it less frequently.

Heavy metal has more classical influences.

Heavy metal isn't heard as often on classic rock stations

Hard rock is party down music and has funkier grooves, heavy metal's sole intent is to be hard.

Hard rock is about sex, heavy metal is about metal(or sex without love, or dragons, satan, and sorcery.)

....some bands that used to be called metal-like zeppelin and thin lizzy, are now considered hard rock

Similiar to my conclusions but there are a number of groups that are still borderline. For example listening to early 70's hard rock albums such as Deep Purple`s "In Rock" this sounds heavier than say Black Sabbath`s "Paranoid" which is a distinctly heavy metal album from a distinctly heavy metal group and both were released in 1970, point being that in some cases hard rock can actually sound heavier than heavy metal? Then when Ritchie Blackmore formed Rainbow and had Dio singing, this was heavy metal due to the group's sword and sorcery imagery but then the group finally became commercialized and sounded no heavier than say a rock group like Foreigner!!!

Then there is the huge difference between late 70's British metal such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest etc, this sounds so different in contrast to the American variety of first Kiss and then especially Van Halen, who I think of as partly heavy metal due to Eddie Van Halen but image wise, music wise and subject wise are distinctly hard rock but then the group are usually referred to as heavy metal and not hard rock???

Then there are a whole host of bordeline stuff from this era like Def Leppard who seem to have started of as heavy metal but became very much hard rock and commercial, also where would a group like the Scorpions be clasified, commercial heavy metal?

I think with the arrival of thrash metal and groups like Metallica and Megadeth this for me defined what modern heavy metal is all about both image and sound wise and groups like Slayer took it to an even more extreme level, as of yet I`ve heard of nobody better than Slayer in the heavy metal genre. Then there are groups like Pantera and Sepultura (love both these groups) for me on first listen, just couldn`t listen to them but after several listens love these groups and in Sepultura`s case there are a huge amount of grooves that are incorporated into their music.

Looking through these threads I`m coming across a whole load of lesser known metal groups that I aim to investigate as well.

Sepultura was great... I wished they'd stayed together longer, it would have been great to see what they'd come up with...

This is hard rock




This is Heavy Metal

Hey, a good visual analogy.

Max Cavalera brough a sonic savagery to the group that Derrick Green wasn`t able to and I think that has been their problem since "Roots"

Agreed. Max's vocals added the intensity to Sepultura which is now long gone.

Eh. I don't think Roots was that great. The stuff before that, yessir, but Roots? Max is great and all, but I'd take Dante XXI over Roots, easily.

I loved Roots, I thought it had a great sound an attitude.