Bill Pulmonary Embolism said:
3 Inches of Blood are great. A buddy of mine who went to school in British Columbia turned me on to them a few years back.
Yeah, when I was living in Vancouver in 2004 I saw their very first CD being promoted in a store and I took a gamble because the cover art seemed cool (judging metal solely by cover art: never let me down in almost 20 years!) and I was really impressed. Back on the topic of sci-fi metal, they actually have one or two sci-fi tracks that are really good (Wykydtron, for example). But it's too bad that whenever people think of sci-fi metal they think of stuff like Bal-Sagoth because, while they are okay, I think the genre needs a lot more diversity than the handful of examples I've seen. I guess Iron Maiden can be commended for making an entire sci-fi album in Somewhere in Time, although they did get a lot of criticism when it first came out because of the synths.
In terms of Star Wars, I don't know if anyone knows Blind Guardian, but they totally incorporated the "jedi" theme from Star Wars in the intro to Times Stands Still (At the Iron Hill) from Nightfall in Middle Earth.