The Behemoth

The Behemoth was a punk rock/thrash metal (proclaimed as "hillbilly metal") band founded by Jim Martin in late 1994, roughly a year following his dismissal from Faith No More, and shortly after recording his guitar parts on Voodoocult's second album. For his new band, Jim recruited Bob Keith on vocals and harmonica, Joe Cabral (2) on drums and Ron Holzner on bass and backing vocals. It wasn't until their first show was booked, scheduled for January 16th of 1995 at the Trocadero in San Francisco, that Jim came up with the band's name, first using "Cootie Club" (Kerrang! Magazine reported the band's name as "Jim Martin's Cootie Club"). After the band's first show, Jim came up with the new name "The Behemoth". The Behemoth recorded four songs in the summer of 1995 at Metallica bassist Jason Newsted's home studio and released them on a demo tape, which Jim Martin referred to as "a limited edition 4-song sampler" during an interview. The demo tape was released through Jim Martin's own music publishing imprint, Living Dead Music. Two songs from this recording session ("Fear" and "Navigator") were released together as a limited edition 7" vinyl single by Berkeley, California-based punk record label, Wingnut Records in September of 1995. Only 500 vinyls were pressed, all on purple wax. A music video was also made for "Navigator" (the song is a The Pogues cover), edited from live footage of the band mixed with cartoons of a dinosaur. The band also printed a strictly limited amount of t-shirts (limited to 36) featuring the animated dinosaur seen in the music video. In June of 1996, The Behemoth opened for Metallica at one of their two Metclub exclusive shows in San Francisco. From the promotion garnered by the 7" single, The Behemoth received interest from several European record labels, including Steamhammer/CBH Records A&R Tom Miller (12). But the band held out until they could secure an American deal. Vocalist Bob Keith then left the band and Jim Martin (who had provided backup vocals up to that point) stepped up as lead vocalist. Bassist Ron Holzner was then replaced by Brent Weeks. In June of 1996, The Behemoth opened for Metallica at one of their two Metclub exclusive shows in San Francisco. The band officially signed with Germany-based Steamhammer (an imprint of SPV GmbH in July of 1996 and from August of 1996 to February of 1997 they recorded a full-length entitled "Milk and Blood" (which was released on September 29th of 1997). Europe's interest in a former Faith No More band member's new project was brought to the attention of the already-established Polish black/death metal band Behemoth (3), and by the end of 1996 (in the middle of recording "Milk And Blood"), the American band was soon forced to give-up its name. As Jim Martin was now fronting the band, and fans continuously referred to The Behemoth as "Jim's Martin's New Band", this ultimately led the band to become known as simply "Jim Martin", or "The Jim Martin Band" on contract. Most of the songs on "Milk and Blood" had been written and performed live as The Behemoth with Bob Keith on vocals. The Jim Martin Band attempted to tour several times in the late 1990's in support of "Milk And Blood", including a planned trip to the UK and Europe, but with the exception of a handful of Californian dates in 1998, little shows were played. Jim's schedule was mainly taken up by touring with Fang (2) as their live guitarist. In 2000, he was made an official member of Fang and recorded four songs with them, but ultimately quit the band shortly before an album was planned to be recorded. On June 27th 2000 "Milk And Blood" was finally released in the USA through Los Angeles-based heavy metal record label Deadline Music and plans were made once again for The Jim Martin Band to tour in promotion of it. Unfortunately, this again did not happen due to personal circumstances on Jim's part, and the band parted ways before the end of 2000.