The Wake of Magellan

The Wake of Magellan, the tenth album, came out first in Japan, on 3 September 1997 from Victor Entertainment (VICP-60079). The European edition on Concrete (Edel) followed the same month and reached number 11 in Germany. The American release, on Atlantic/Lava, waited until 7 April 1998 and, because of the delay, added three acoustic bonus tracks, as the old official FAQ explains. In Japan it reached number 44 on the Oricon album chart. Its hero is Hector Del-Fuego Magellan, an old Spanish sailor who claims descent from Ferdinand Magellan and means to sail out and die at sea. He comes upon a boy dead of heroin and a funeral wreath bearing the name of Veronica Guerin, and gives up his wish to die to save a stowaway thrown from a freighter in a storm, as the official site's synopsis tells it. Two real events run through it: the murder of Veronica Guerin, the Irish journalist who took on her country's drug trade, and the case of the freighter Maersk Dubai, which docked at Halifax in May 1996 after a crewman reported that stowaways had been thrown overboard on the captain's orders, as the band's old official site recounted. It was the first album since Hall of the Mountain King to be made by the same line-up as the one before, and Chris Caffery, Al Pitrelli and Johnny Lee Middleton share writing credits with Jon Oliva, according to the old official FAQ. Paul O'Neill produced it with Jon as co-producer, and Dave Wittman recorded and mixed it. It was also Zak Stevens's last album with the band. The player on this page plays the thirteen songs followed by two bonus tracks from a later reissue. The running order here is the original's as printed.