When a band loses one of its members, it's always difficult to overcome the situation. When a band loses an instrumentalist, it's not that much difficult to move ahead without him and replace him. Well, I mean of course if for instance Alexi Laiho suddenly quitted Children Of Bodom, then I don't think the band could overcome this departure. But when it comes to the singer's departure, especially when the singer is a female, then things start to become a bit more difficult.

Lullacry is one of Finland’s many gothic rock acts and after the release of their previous album Be My God in 2001, the female singer Tanya decided to leave the band due to those damn musical differences. The band managed rapidly to find her replacement in the person of Tanja. To put it straight, Lullacry replaced a fake blonde by a real brunette (lol). As for myself, I don’t really hear a big difference between the two of them and probably like many others I didn’t care as much as if Tarja was to leave Nightwish. I think however that it is definitely a change for the better since Tanja (the new one) has a warmer and more powerful voice. Crucify My Heart is their third release and doesn’t show a major leap forward from their sophomore album in terms of production, songwriting and performance, although this new album does show an expected little progression for this young band into better musical maturity. The production is thick, warm, full and helps bring their pop metal out. The songs are upbeat, catchy and melodic with a couple of nice crunchy guitars and not operatic like many other female fronted gothic acts. Crucify My Heart has its moments, alternating between straight forward heavy pop songs and lovely mellow ballads, but it does fail to hold the listener’s attention from the beginning to the very end because of a bunch of cheesy radio pop metal formatted songs.

This is definitely the kind of album you will play in your car radio while taking your wife out for a drive on Sunday afternoon without her screaming at you for playing some loud metal cacophony again. As for my wife, she enjoys this stuff alot although she would not have bought the album herself.