Jed Simon
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Jed Simon was born in 1964 in Victoria, British Columbia. He gained attention in the metal community with his third (speed metal) band Armoros, which was founded in 1985. Armoros disbanded in 1989 after 2 successful demos and an album.
Jed's next band was Caustic Thought, when his career with Byron Stroud began. Jed did 3 demos with Caustic Thought, and when he left them, he gave the job to Devin Townsend. After Caustic Thought, Jed briefly worked with Devin on his Noisescapes project, before Devin left for Los Angeles to play with Steve Vai. In 1995, Devin asked Jed to join his latest project, Strapping Young Lad (aka SYL), and Jed has been a part of SYL ever since. Jed contributed guitars to Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing and also performed live with SYL for the tour of the album. Jed also appears in the video for S.Y.L. from that album.
In 1996, Jed joined Frontline Assembly (FLA for short) on their Hard Wired tour as a touring guitarist (and also percussionist on Plasticity and Gun f.ex.). There was a live album and video done from the tour, which became known as Live Wired (1996). After that, Jed returned with SYL, who achieved even greater success with their second album City (1997).
When Frontline Assembly went on to perform the Re-Wind tour in late 1998, Jed was on board again. In 1999, he also contributed guitars to FLA's studio album Implode. Jed's last tour with FLA was the Implosion tour in the spring of 1999. In 2000, Jed worked on Devin Townsend's Physicist (Devin Townsend album) project, which is comprised of all four members of SYL, but was considered "too light" by Devin to be a SYL album.
Since 2000, Jed has been busy touring and recording with SYL most of the time. In 2002, SYL released their self-titled album, in 2005 they released Alien, and their most recent recording, The New Black, was released on July 11, 2006. Besides SYL he is also the guitarist of Zimmer's Hole, which includes fellow SYL bandmate, Byron Stroud. Zimmer's Hole has released two studio albums: Bound by Fire (1997, and which was re-issued in 2003) and Legion of Flames. His newest project is Tenet, in which Jed is the sole songwriter, guitarist and vocalist.
Jed now lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two cats.
