Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that emerged as a defined musical style in the 1970s, having its roots in hard rock bands which, between 1969 and 1974,[1] mixed blues and rock to create a hybrid with a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterised by the use of highly-amplified distortion. Hard rock is a form of rock and roll music which finds its closest roots in early-1960s garage rock and psychedelic rock. It is typified by a heavy use of distorted electric guitar, bass guitar and drums. The term "hard rock" is often used as an umbrella term for genres such as punk, grunge, in order to distinguish them from softer, more radio friendly pop rock music. Heavy rock is more hardcore so to say

The terms are fuzzy and it's common to find two people who are in disagreement as to whether certain songs or bands are one or the other genre. Adding to this is the fact that heavy metal can refer to the group of genres that make up all of metal including Extreme metal, Sludge metal, and so forth, or it can refer only to one subtype of metal generally related to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWoBHM) in the early eighties (for a time Heavy Metal could be associated with slow, distorted blues-based rock iconised by Black Sabbath, but this seems to have morphed into the meaning of the overall metal genre I first mentioned, and Black Sabbath is closer to what we now call Doom Metal). The most reasonable deliniation I can come up with is to consider the primary genres of influence: Hard Rock is based on Blues and other "folk" genres, where Heavy Metal is heavily influenced by classical music (especially by Wagner ethos) and virtuistic concepts, heavily tempered by a pro-masculine (but rarely anti-feminine) and blue-collar (but rarely political) worldview. A heavy metal song is unlikely to rely on pentatonic scales (as seen in blues, blues rock, and to a lesser degree in hard rock), less likely to have harmonies and melodies distinguished from each other, more likely to be diatonic or chromatic, a much higher degree of dissonance, an emphasis on atmosphere, more likely to have particularly slow or fast tempos and tempo changes, more likely to have uneven time signatures and signature changes, and more likely to have dark and brooding themes.

first of all metal in my opinion is a completely different genre, though related, have a distinction between the two rock lyrics:song about a guy beeing turned down by a girl metal:guy is turned down by a girl and then rapes and dismembers her in a satanic ritual get the idea? metal is much more brutal and evil while rock is directed towards a mainstream odience plus the sound is much different, rock tends to be slower with more harmony to delight the listener metal is much more powerful and is attended to give more of a dramatic feel metal also tends to be more complex and harder to play

Hard rock tends to have slightly added mixtures of other genres. The more common mixes include alternative, pop, or alternative pop. Hard rock also tends to have not so heavy anthem (the reason metal is referred to as HEAVY metal). Metal can usually be found as a more music angsty genre rather than lyrical angst, such as rock is. Rock and metal are commonly believed to be sub genres of eachother (rock is a sub genre of metal, metal is a sub genre of rock, etc.). It really all depends on time as well as genre. A few bands have learned to add their own spin on the genre they choose. The reason rock bands are usually mixed and metals are not, probably have to do with history. Rock was in fact built on other genres while metal was built to create its own sort of genre. The differences are wide spread and truly there are mostly dependencys.

Hard Rock, or any rock genre has a particular rythm - 1,2,1,2... 1,1,2,1,1,2 and so on. The key to it is that they always have the 1,2 signature, even if it is hidden by lighter beats. Just listen to any of the rock compositions and the main beat always ends up as a 1,2 variation. Metal (most types of it anyway) is more into constant beats like 1,1,1 or 2,2,2 Now I'm not saying that metal can not have a 1,2 beat. It happens (although in lighter types of metal mostly). But Rock or Heave Rock can NOT have a constant rythm like the one I mentioned. It is simply against the music rules (despite some saying that music has none) Rock rythms have not changed since they were invented (or presented to a wide piblic opinion to be more correct), although they became more complex and sometimes it is difficult to extract the main theme beat from a given song. The beat characteristic is by no means a 100% indicator of a composition being rock or metal. It's just when you hear a anything other than a variation of a 1,2,1,2 beat, you can bet your last penny/cant/shilling (underline as required :) that this is not Rock

Metal is louder. Hard Rock smashes their guitars on stage. Or is it the other way around? Anyway, how would I know?! I'm 64 years old!

aerosmith= hard rock.guns+roses=hard rock.maiden,priest,accept,metallica=heavy metal.

One is like hitting your eardrums with an immovable object. The other is like slicing then slowly