Celeste is another amazing band I heard about mainly through various ‘best of 2009′ lists. Hailing from France, these guys combine the raw energy of sludge and hardcore with the dark atmosphere of black metal. Their music is much heavier on the hardcore, but the vocals have a blackened maliciousness to them and the album’s production has a densely suffocating quality to it that separates Celeste from most bands of that genre. Imagine a darker version of Botch or Converge and you’ll be pretty close to Celeste’s sound.

I’m guessing that Celeste’s music a little too hardcore-sounding for some black metal fans to enjoy, but if you’re not one of those people who has to stick closely to a particular genre, these guys are well worth checking out. Their latest album Misanthrope(s) and their 2008 release Nihiliste(s) are both available as free downloads from their label’s site, which to me seems kind of bizarre given how good these guys are. One minor drawback is that both albums sound extremely similar, so despite how ridiculously good the music is it’s easy to get tired of it after awhile. But for the low, low price of free, how can you really complain?

» Download Misanthrope(s) from Denovali Records

German dark metallers Bethlehem have a small free downloads page on their website containing random tracks that fans might find interesting.

Currently there are only two songs offered for download, but both are rather unusual. One is called ‘The 11th Hour…’, which features lyrics written by Nihilist from Seattle black metal band In Memorium. You can check out In Memorium on MySpace at myspace.com/inmemoriummetal.

The other song is actually a Frank Sinatra cover which was originally done as a hidden track for the Mein Weg album.

» Bethlehem downloads page

I saw Fall of Efrafa’s Inlé on a few best-of-2009 lists and decided to check them out. While musically they are not really my cup of tea, the more I read about the band, the more interesting they became. Fall of Efrafa is a UK-based band who base either music on the themes and mythology of Richard Adams’s Watership Down (an awesome book by the way). Their lyrics focus on atheism and animal rights, and their music is a genre-defying, epic mixture of sludge, post-rock and crust among other things.

The band has called it quits as of this past December, but in four years of existence they managed to release a trilogy of full-length albums known as “The Warren of Snares” as well as a few other singles and splits. They have all three full-lengths posted on their website as free high-quality MP3 downloads, although they’ve also released CD versions as well as a limited-edition LP box set of all their releases.

» Download Fall of Efrafa’s music from their website
» Buy Fall of Efrafa’s albums at Halo of Flies

Belgian black/viking metallers Theudho are celebrating the winter solstice with a new EP showcasing the band’s new line-up. The Silence is being released as a free digital download as a gift to friends and supporters. The EP consists of re-recorded versions of four songs from Theudho’s back catalogue: ‘Silence reigned over the Bog’, ‘Fafnirs Blut,’ ‘Foreboding Dreams’ and ‘Gudrun’s Revenge.’

The free versions of the songs are 128kbps, so not great quality, but certainly listenable. You can also download 320kbps versions at the ConSouling Sounds digital store.

Theudho has also recently made all their albums available for streaming from Last.fm for free, so you really have no excuse for not checking these guys out.

» Theuhdo - The Silence free download

» Theudho’s page on Last.fm

Abridged Pause Recordings is a promising new label with an intriguing roster of artists that includes Smohalla, Dreams of the Drowned, Kailash, Parabstruse and several others. They’ve so far released three releases as digital downloads, with the first two available for free on the Abridged Pause site and the third being only $1.

The first release, titled Diluvian Temperals, is a compilation that includes unreleased tracks from all of Abridged Pause’s artists. The second, Sea of Abandoned Polaroids, is a split between Phlegma and Stagnant Waters, which are each solo projects of the two members of Smohalla. The third is release “post-grindcore” act Sveta Istina Vjestica’s debut full-length, titled Witches in the Air.

» Abridged Pause Releases Page

There are a gazillion bands named some variation of ‘Monolith.’ This one is from Philadelphia, PA and plays ambient / post-metal. Their 2008 album Eclipse is available for free from GimmeSound.com.

If you’re into post-rock, GimmeSound also has the latest albums from Gifts From Enola and Caspian for free as well.

Slavogorje is a Croatian black metal band with a strong folk influence. Their music reminds me a lot of Kroda, although Slavogorje’s takes the folk / pagan element even further. Slavogorje’s albums are filled with sections of songs and even full tracks that use various different acoustic instruments, clean vocals and other unusual sounds. If you need any more evidence just check out the band member’s credits on the album - one member is responsible for “vocals, piano, keyboards, whistle, sopilka, troblja, jaw harp, pan flute, rattles, wood sticks, and bells”.

Slavogorje’s entire discography is available for free download from the Slavogorje Last.fm page. They have been fairly prolific recently, having released Priroda Opstanka in 2008, and both the full-length Zimsko Krzno and a split EP titled Post-Folk in 2009. Priroda Opstanka is probably their best and most polished release, although their other albums are worth checking out as well. Their tracks from the Post-Folk split are also interesting, because the band mostly ditches the metal and explores the folk elements of their sound.

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

Saw this on Blistering Light a little while ago: The Radical Matters label has a free web edition of “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” by L’Acephale available for download.

L’Acephale is an ambient / folk black metal project from Portland Oregon, and the recording offered here is an alternate mix of the track which appears on the “Malfeasance” album that came out earlier this year. The track on the album is around 23 minutes long, while the web edition clocks in at 93 minutes.

» Download L’Acephale - “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” at Radical Matters

Avant-garde progressive metal band Maudlin of the Well have released “Part the Second,” their first album since 2001’s “Bath” and “Leaving Your Body Map.” The album is available as a digital download from the band’s website at MaudlinOfTheWell.net.

The band took an interesting approach with this release. The production of the album was completely funded by donations from fans, and in exchange the band released the album as a free download. A list of the generous donors that made the album possible accompanies the download on the band’s website.