By the time you started your own quest for coolness, the Metal phase had passed. These days, you snicker when you think back to what you used to deem cool, which leaves you a bit confused at the moment: How is it, a decade and a half later, that Iron Maiden 's "Give Me Ed ... 'Til I'm Dead" tour is big enough to sell out concert stadiums? And so you desperately flip through all your fashion magazines for some sign that this fall's trend will be butt-length hair, tight pants, and black concert T's. Meanwhile, your childhood best friend's older brother (now fat and balding) has heard that Iron Maiden's lineup still includes Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith, who rejoined in 1999, and that the band's been playing all the crowd favorites, scathing tunes like "Run to the Hills" and "The Number of the Beast." And he, along with thousands of others, truly cannot wait to relive the harmonized guitars and operatic metal screams. After a dramatic pause, you wonder if maybe he's had it figured out all along. Well, now's as good a time as any to find out for yourself.
