50 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums Of 2017

Star Wars is great. Heavy metal is great.

Star Wars-themed heavy metal, on the other hand, is f*cking godlike, as the cosmic rockers Galactic Empire demonstrated this year with their self-titled debut.

And from that description, one could easily assume that this is a band that just makes run-of-the-mill heavy music and happens to sing about everybody’s favourite galaxy far, far away, right?

Galactic Empire goes way further than that! Their album is an eleven-track journey comprised of nothing but instrumental rock covers of John Williams’ iconic scores from the first six movies. Highlights include the iconic main theme, “The Imperial March” (a.k.a. that track that plays every time you see Darth Vader), “The Cantina Song” (yes, really) and every geek’s dream come true, “Duel of the Fates”.

In other cases such feats may be considered a cheap gimmick, something on the level of a YouTuber with a terrible camcorder and far too much time on their hands. But what makes Galactic Empire worthy of this list is the sheer precision they put into their reworking of Williams’ legendary works, complete with three guitars, bass, incessantly blast-beating drums and even choirs.

The five members of the band go above and beyond in the visual aspect as well, each of them dressing (to admirable detail) as a member of Star Wars’ evil Empire: both black and white Stormtroopers and a red Imperial guard are capped off perfectly by the sight of Boba Fett on drums and Vader himself on lead guitars.