The punk guys couldn't care less about music theory or whatever, they cared about having fun with the music and playing skills were almost irrelevant, almost frowned upon (you don't hear a lot of guitar solos in punk - it's mostly 3-note, fast paced music with rebelious lyrics... I feel so old describing it like that :D ). For a time, "broken" timing was in vogue, both in some punk bands and in a lot in metal (not sure if Metallica was a pioneer with that? I am too "young" to remember).
The metal guys were not completely different, to be honest, except for playing skills being much more important, as it's integral part of the music to have endless solos and complex riffs... but at least in my circles it was more about raw skills (how fast you could play more than, say, how much "feeling", though that was important too) than theoretical knowledge.
I have never been much of a fan of punk music but I love the punk aesthetic. That mindset really extends to so many things.