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!

Moribund Records has been running a lot of sales and promotions lately, but their current one is pretty good. They’re running a promotion right now offering 20% off everything in the store, excepting No Colours and Ajna / NED releases. This deal runs until October 16th.

» Shop the Moribund Records Webstore

The End Records’ Omega Mailorder is currently running a promotion to celebrate the arrival of the Fall season. They are offering 16% off the entire store for a limited time. Just use the coupon code FALL09 when checking out.

While checking out Wodnesthrone’s latest album Loss (a pretty good album by the way), I happened across the website of Bindrune Recordings, the label that released the album. They are a small US-based label with a handful of releases, including last year’s Blood of the Black Owl full-length.

The coolest thing by far on their site is that they have a digital downloads store where you name your own price, just like Radiohead’s last album. So you can pay whatever you want to download any of their releases! All releases come as high-quality 320kbps mp3s and also include album art, which not a lot of places do.

Their online store isn’t too bad either. The selection isn’t incredible, but you can tell that the owners hand-pick the albums they carry because what they do have is generally good stuff. It’s also really cheap and has free shipping for US customers. Their selection focuses mostly on black metal, but there’s a scattering of other extreme metal releases in stock as well.

» Bindrune Recordings
» Bindrune Recordings Online Store
» Bindrune Recordings Digial Download Store

Moribund Records currently has a pretty good sale going on. From August 7rd until August 17th, they are offering a 25% discount on all full length CDs except for No Colours and Ajna / NED releases or stuff that’s already on sale. They don’t knock off this much too often, so it’s worth checking out!

Moribund Records has a sale going on where existing customers can get 20% off everything in the store. New customers can similarly get 10% off. This deal lasts until this Friday, July 10th so you’d better hurry!

The End Records’ Omega Mailorder also has a July 4th promotion going on. They are offering 12.5% off the entire store for the first two weeks of July. Just use the coupon code JULY09 when checking out.

Moribund Records just announced another sale, this one even better than normal. From June 3rd until June 10th, they are offering a $4.00 discount on all full length CDs. That equates to around a 20-30% discount on all full length albums that aren’t already on sale!

Moribund Records has another sale going that knocks 10% off all items not already on sale. This one runs until May 30th (yeah 3 days from now). Better enjoy it while you can!

A few of the lesser known US online metal distributors have some sales and promotions going on this month. Here’s a summary:

Full Moon Productions has dropped prices on most of their CDs to $5.00, and lowered prices on most other items as well.

Black Plague Records is currently offering all CDs for $5.00 each, with free shipping for the US and Canada. Their catalog is a pretty random mix of extreme metal, leaning heavily toward black and death metal.

Metal Centre is taking 40% off most of the CDs in their catalog. They have a very extensive selection with some pretty hard-to-find items, so there’s a good chance you’ll get lucky and find some import album you’ve been searching for at a very good price.

Negative Existence is offering a 10-20% discount on everything in their store, plus a buy 5 get 1 free deal. They too have a very extensive, well-organized catalog of extreme metal. They also offer free shipping to the US and Canada.

Finally, Autumn Wind Productions has a sale going on for 25-50% off most of the items in their catalog. They focus more on dark ambient, black ambient and neo-folk.

The Pacific Northwest’s Moribund Records is currently running a store-wide promotion where you can buy two CDs and get a third for free. Just head to the Moribund Records online store for more information on how to obtain the discount. The sale runs until April 18th, so there’s just about a week left.

Moribund Records focuses heavily on black metal, and their roster includes Azrael, Hiems, Horna, Behexen, I Shalt Become, Krohm and Sargeist. Their extensive online store features an excellent collection of extreme metal, including some releases that aren’t easily found elsewhere in the US!