Eye Rhyme is a Toronto area based- rock trio. With the newly released cd "Soul" the band has two releases on their conscience and has opened for bands such as Big Sugar, King`s X and Rusty. All three members are well educated musicians, and the material on this album is original, representing a wide variety of influences. The cd has 11 songs with running time of 45 minutes. It's always fun to discover new indie bands, at least when they are good, and Eye Rhyme is good indeed. The cd opens with "Electricity", a groovy rocker with a funky edge. The song also introduces the fine vocals Of Ian Graham, which is splendid throughout cd. The song has good variation, with many cool parts and elements.

All band members are crafted musicians, and the variety of influences in their music is broad. That makes it hard to put their music into any specific category. There are influences of rock, contemporary rock, heavy, funk, prog rock etc. to be heard. The music is based around the great guitar work of Jay LeRoux, who also make room for acoustic atmospheric solos, and the vocals of Ian Graham, which is not your typical high pitched singer, but more in the mid- register. The bass and keyboard work by Graham himself, which is more prominent on some songs than other, is also very tasty. Take for instance songs like the poppy melodic rock of "Distant Light", a song of pure class with good keyboard work, and the beautiful acoustic "Journey" for tasty bass lines.

All songs are good, but the variation in style/approach from song to song, also result in some songs standing out as a cut above the others. There are automatically some songs that appeal to you more than other songs. This is the disadvantage of being varied and bringing on a lot of different influences from song to song. Considering this, I think the band is pulling through it very well, as all songs are good and well done, and not too varied for their own good.

The production by the band is very good, even more impressive as it's an independent release. These are all skilled musicians and they do without doubt know how to write good, interesting, different and varied music. It might take some spins before you really get into this disc, but that's what characterize quality music. If you like slightly progressive rock/heavy with various influences, these guys are well worth checking out. I give this cd 3 ½ strong points out of 5.