1977 the Comic

I’m posting this to ignite a little conversation about a couple terms that are tossed about a bit too freely. There are some subtle, but distinct, differences between these two terms. Some people would classify Deep Purple as a Heavy Metal band. I disagree. They are Hard Rock. Here’s why: they had some melody. Let me expound.

The distinction, in my crazy, 70s-fogged brain, is that Heavy Metal is more ponderous, and Hard Rock is more melodic. The subtle difference between screechy and noisy. Boston created some great Hard Rock but always with a touch of melody. Metallica produces pounding songs on repetitive riffs that just invade your eardrums until they bleed with lead vocals that rarely have any melody to speak of. Thus, Heavy Metal. When a group produces loud, thunderous, monochromatic music with a screechy lead singer who is merely screaming the lyrics, that’s Heavy Metal. Deep Purple never produced a single song that was “screechy” as most of their music had some sort of melody in it, especially during Ian Gillans reign as lead singer.

Here’s a simple test: If you can hum the tune or guitar riff, it’s Hard Rock. If you bang your head against your car’s dash as you air-guitar with the song, it’s Heavy Metal. Some people just call it Metal these day, but regardless, the sound is essentially the same.

Some groups border both genres, and admittedly it is hard to tell sometimes. The early 70s output of Zeppelin, Purple and Sabbath all fall into the Heavy Rock category, in my opinion. There’s some great riffs in there and all the lead singing has some sort of melody to it.  But some of their stuff is hard to separate from the two genres.  Judas Priest’s output comes to mind too that borders both genres and is hard to label them in either catagory, as does the output of AC/DC sometimes.

What sparked this little post was I saw a listing of “Heavy Metal” bands that included Kiss and Uriah Heep. Kiss? Heavy Metal? No. Glam rock, perhaps, but never Heavy Metal, in my opinion.

Now I will let you all throw back at me why I’m right or wrong… that’s how this works.

(PS: A true rocker friend of mine noted a simple distinction as well: Hard Rock usually has keyboards, and Heavy Metal does not.)