What type of beats is heavy metal music made up of?

Here is some insightful commentary:

You basic metal groove is not very technical at all as a matter of fact. It is played in common time, and is designed to accent the rhythm guitar. With most metal songs, you want to accent the quarter notes to give it that head banging feel to it. Now if you add too much to your drum beat, you will lose the attention on those notes, and the feeling will leave.

In most cases, the beat does not define the song so much as the other instruments in "heavy metal".

Your basic metal drum beat will drive the band, and your song forward, giving the band a strong quarter note accent. This allows the guitarists to provide heavy distortion, and riffs that will compliment your beat. There is a lot to learn about playing heavy metal music, so do not just stop here. A popular technique for heavy metal music is adding some double bass beats.

The basic 8th note beat is generally played in simple rock and pop songs. This beat is played in common time, or 4/4, and is one of the first beats most beginner drummers tackle. A lot of drum beats (rock included) are based around this basic beat, so make sure know it and master it well! When a drummer learns this beat they feel a little more comfortable with rock and roll drumming. In addition to this, mainstream music these days is heavily based around heavy rock and pop.

http://www.rockdrummingsystem.com/underground/drum-beats/heavy-metal-rock.php

http://www.howtoplaydrums.com/rock-drums/

Heavy metal (often referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music[1] that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The beat in metal songs is emphatic, with deliberate stresses. Weinstein observes that the wide array of sonic effects available to metal drummers enables the "rhythmic pattern to take on a complexity within its elemental drive and insistency."[10] In many heavy metal songs, the main groove is characterized by short, two-note or three-note rhythmic figures—generally made up of 8th or 16th notes. These rhythmic figures are usually performed with a staccato attack created by using a palm-muted technique on the rhythm guitar.[18]

Brief, abrupt, and detached rhythmic cells are joined into rhythmic phrases with a distinctive, often jerky texture. These phrases are used to create rhythmic accompaniment and melodic figures called riffs, which help to establish thematic hooks. Heavy metal songs also use longer rhythmic figures such as whole note- or dotted quarter note-length chords in slow-tempo power ballads.

The tempos in early heavy metal music tended to be "slow, even ponderous." By the late 1970s, however, metal bands were employing a wide variety of tempos. In the 2000s, metal tempos range from slow ballad tempos (quarter note = 60 beats per minute) to extremely fast blast beat tempos (quarter note = 350 beats per minute).
The essence of metal drumming is creating a loud, constant beat for the band using the "trifecta of speed, power, and precision." Metal drumming "requires an exceptional amount of endurance", and drummers have to develop "considerable speed, coordination, and dexterity...to play the intricate patterns" used in metal. A characteristic metal drumming technique is the cymbal choke, which consists of striking a cymbal and then immediately silencing it by grabbing it with the other hand (or, in some cases, the same striking hand), producing a burst of sound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music