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.

The Free Metal Albums blog keeps track of legal, freely-available downloads that become available online. Most of the albums I’ve listed in Musical Warfare’s Free Category show up on there, so I think I’ll let this guy handle it from now on.

Out of the 1000+ albums indexed on the site, most are demos, albums from bands you’ve never heard of, and stuff like that, which is not surprising. Of course, there are also plenty of well-known acts that have their music available for free online. Aside from several that I’ve already posted about, some examples include the back catalogue of Swedish melodic death metal band Eucharist, and all of Esoteric’s older albums.

Free Metal Albums updates all the time with new free metal downloads that they find, and the site has RSS feeds and a Twitter account so it’s really easy to follow. Definitely worth checking out.

Australian black metal band Moon has posted links to download three demos released in 2008 titled “Moon,” “Blood” and “Apparitions.”

Moon plays dark and heavily atmospheric black metal with very fuzzy production, and they cite Emit and Dead Raven Choir as influences. The demo tracks are excellent and are definitely worth a few listens.

The demos can be downloaded here:
http://blackmetalvndergrovnd.blogspot.com/search/label/moon

You can find Moon on myspace at http://www.myspace.com/moonmyth. In addition to the three demos posted for download, Moon released another titled “Omen” last October.

Finland’s Ikuinen Kaamos has announced that “Epilogue,” which was previously scheduled for a November release, is now shelved permanently due to a lack of funds at their label, Descent Productions.

To appease their disappointed fans, the band has released a free digital EP titled “Closure” consisting of three songs from the album. The EP is available for download at Ikuinen Kaamos’s MySpace page. The band also announced that they will re-record the remaining songs from “Epilogue” for their next album, which they will begin recording next year.

Ikuinen Kaamos’s sound can be described as a mix of progressive black metal and mid-paced doom metal. At times they sound like a blackened version of Daylight Dies, or even a doomier Opeth! In addition to the EP, the band’s entire debut album “The Forlorn” is currently available for streaming on the band’s MySpace page as well.

These guys have some real talent and it’s a shame that they’re getting screwed over by their label. Definitely check this stuff out if you haven’t heard them!

Century Media is offering their Spring 2008 sampler album as a free MP3 download at https://www.cmdistro.com/specials.aspx. Once you create a free Century Media account, you’ll be able to download the album.

The 20-song sampler features recent tracks from well-known Century Media artists such as Heaven Shall Burn, Turisas, Arch Enemy, Into Eternity, and Arsonists Get All The Girls.

The Nuclear Blast Musicshop is currently offering a 20-track MP3 sampler for free download. The sampler features tracks from Nuclear Blast artists such as Meshuggah, Arsis, Testament, Kataklysm, Hypocrisy, Tiamat and Keep of Kalessin.

Amazon MP3 is also offering a “Best of Nuclear Blast: 20th Anniversary Compilation” album for free, although it contains many of the same tracks that are on the 20-track sampler.