“Right now, Bound Gods is my main focus,” Darkholme told XBIZ. “Hopefully, if it’s successful, we’ll bring in another website, and I will be in charge of the men’s division.”
Darkholme, who is an expert in the area of Shibari [Japanese rope bondage], has been a performer for several major gay studios including Titan Media and Can-Am. He also has been proprietor of Muscle Bound Productions since 2001.
Also an accomplished photographer, his photos appeared in “Male Bondage,” published by Bruno Grumnder in 2006. Darkholme said that the aesthetics of his work match the quality of other Kink.com products.
“When you say that it’s very polished, it’s funny, because that’s my aesthetic also, so it blends very well with Kink.com,” he said. “I’m trying to bring in huge porn stars, big names, and also I’m trying to discover new talent, and we’re going to mix it all together. I’m getting the muscle boys, the porn stars, the boy-next-door, the gym boy, the leather boy, the fetish boy — I’m getting all types of men for the site.”
In preview trailers for the site, Darkholme employed the talents of three well-known gay performers: Rod Barry, Tober Brandt and Chad Hunt. While Barry and Brandt are known for their no-holds-barred style of performing, Darkholme said he was anxious to work with models like Hunt who had little experience with fetish lifestyle play.
His goal is to work with professional and amateur talent, eventually cultivating a stable of 12 dominant tops for the site.
“These are big-time porn stars, and I love working with them,” Darkholme said. “But I also love working with Tober, who has been doing it for so long. He’s on cruise control, so I don’t have to do much with him. He’s got skills and I just let him run with it.
“Chad is a top in vanilla porn, so he has that dominant streak inside of him already,” the director added. “All it takes from me is to show him the correct way of using a flog or a belt, and to hit safely. We have safety lessons before we start. That’s all it took, and he went with it. That’s my job — to bring out the SM and the sadistic side of these tops.”
Ultimately, Darkholme would like to create content that has strong elements of fetish and hardcore sex, but at the same time, would appeal to a viewer inexperienced with hardcore fetish content. He feels that the high production values of Kink’s other members site demonstrate an across-the-board appeal, and agreed that the Bound Gods project was in response to what Kink’s consumer base had been asking for.
“There’s nothing like it on the web, so they’re just starving for this material,” Darkholme said. “There’s nothing even worth watching.
“I’d like to make it so that it has something for everyone — the vanilla crowd who has never thought of bondage or SM, but say, ‘You know I’m not really into that, but that looks fucking hot,’” he added. “I get email like that all the time. ‘I’m a pretty vanilla person. I never thought about leather or any of that, but then, when I saw you’re stuff, you converted me.’”
In keeping with Kink’s mission statement as a resource for local fetish lifestylers in the Bay Area, Darkholme is actively recruiting models from the community, and also has plans for creating educational seminars around BDSM and rigging.
“This is San Francisco, where all the leather boys are, and I want to bring in the leather community and embrace the leather community, to be a part of KinkMen.com and give me some feedback, so it can be something for them also” he said. “A place for them to for to and have discussions — hopefully, I can have meetings here in the Armory for the leather community that they’ll be happy with.”
The site launches tomorrow with eight shoots, and will be updated every Thursday with 35-40 minute long episodes. There will also be photo galleries and a members’ comment area. Each shoot will feature hardcore gay sex, SM and bondage, with muscular models. The KinkOnDemand.com VOD theater website will also offer video from Darkholme’s Muscle Bound Productions.
“I can’t believe that they’re paying me for this. I pinch myself every morning because it’s just like a dream job for me,” Darkholme said. “Everybody [at Kink] is extremely supportive and I have total freedom, and they support my artistic endeavors.”
"I’m very excited about this release in particular because it marks our first serious attempt to enter the gay market,” Kink.com founder Peter Ackworth said. “If Bound Gods is as successful as we think it will be, it will open the doors to a whole suite of gay websites. We already have tentative plans for more projects under the Kink Men brand and we are just waiting to see how this initial project is received."
To view a trailer and sample shoots, click here.
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