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If you grew up in the '80s, you remember it well: Your best friend had this older brother who'd taken to wearing tight black jeans and chains. Sometimes, while playing with He-Man's Castle Grey Skull or Malibu Barbie's Malibu Beach House, you'd hear a strange music emanating through his walls. It was the sound of grown men singing in high-pitched, near-theatrical voices. The guitars alternated between being thick and oozy and fast and squealy. The drums sounded like a war movie your dad liked to watch. You were at once intimidated and compelled. This music seemed much cooler than anything you'd ever heard, the brother privy to some secret cool persons' club you thought you"d never understand.

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.