What Is the Difference Between Rock & Metal?

History and Roots

• Rock music evolved from the blues, with stars like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley developing a rebellious, upbeat style in the 1950s and 1960s, before Bob Dylan characterized the move from acoustic guitar to electric in 1965. Bands like the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Beatles shot the genre to world-wide popularity.

  Metal music meanwhile started out as a sub-division of rock. Black Sabbath was the first band to move from rock into metal in the early 1970s, although bands like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin had many heavy metal characteristics and remain influential in the genre.

Musical Style and Image

• Metal music tends to be more aggressive and fast-paced, making rock seem mellow and laid-back in comparison. Metal music and its lyrical themes can be darker or more fantastical than those in rock, and many bands cultivate a specific image--such as wearing lots of black leather and spiked wristbands.

Vocals

• Rock singers tend to be similar in style to pop singers, singing cleanly and tunefully. Metal, meanwhile, features a much more harsh and aggressive screamed or shouted vocal style, or high-pitched clean melodic singing--or even a mix of the two.

Guitars

• Rock music features both clean and distorted guitar sounds, but metal generally uses much more distortion and effects. A lot of metal songs feature extended guitar solos which generally do not appear in rock songs, and there is a much greater emphasis on lead guitar and riffs throughout rather than simple chords. The guitars are often tuned lower than those in rock music to create a deeper, darker sound, and acoustic guitar features very rarely in metal music.

Drumming

• Metal tends to feature a lot more fast-paced drumming than rock, often with use of double-bass pedals. While a lot of rock music uses fairly straightforward, simple beats, the drumming in metal is much more complex and uses a lot of different time signatures and fills.

  The drums are generally much more prominent in the sound mix in metal songs, acting as more of a driving force in the music, and some metal bands even feature drum solos in their songs.