March is Metal Month at several music retailers and labels. Apparently EMI and Caroline Distribution decided to use the month of March to highlight several of the metal labels they distribute, including Century Media, Candlelight, Nuclear Blast, Willowtip, Earache, and Season of Mist. What does this mean for you? Lots of sales and free stuff!

Amazon MP3 has a bunch of stuff on sale as well as several free compilations available for download. Southern Lord, The End Records and Nuclear Blast all have free compilations available on the site containing some great stuff like recent tracks from Pelican, Wolves in the Throne Room, Orcustus, Black Breath, Sunn O))), Sigh, Borknagar, Vreid, Eluveitie, Arsis, Augury and Hypocrisy, to name a few. Even if you don’t care about most of the bands on those labels, what the hell, it’s free! And it’s a pretty decent way to check out a bunch of bands you may not have heard.

» Download The End Records’ Amazon Metal Sampler

» Download Southern Lord: Ressurection Compilation

» Download Nuclear Blast Sinister Spring Slaughter Compilation

» Download Best of Nuclear Blast: 20th Anniversary Compilation

The folks at Amazon MP3 also seem to have put together a metal sampler, and while their definition of metal is unfortunately rather broad, their Metal Month compilation does contain some interesting stuff like new tracks by Fear Factory, Defeated Sanity and Ihsahn.

» Download Amazon MP3’s March Is Metal Month 2010 Sampler

Aside from the free compilations, Amazon MP3 has a bunch of albums on sale for $6.99 or less to celebrate Metal Month. The selection of sale items is a bit spotty but there’s some good stuff in there like recent releases by Ulcerate, Severed Savior, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Wolves in the Throne Room, Pelican, Orcustus, Nadja and Hull.

» Check out the Metal Month sale selection at Amazon MP3!

Finally, if you hurry you can catch the tail end of Moribund Records’s March sale. They are offering a blanket 15% discount off of everything for new customers. If you’ve shopped there before, the discount increases to 20%. They are also throwing in free posters for all orders and free promo CDs if you spend more than $35.00. The sale runs until this Friday, March 19th.

» Check out the selection at Moribund Records Armory!