My Walkout Song - Lydia Lunch

The walkout song is a time-honored tradition in MMA. It's also a delicate balancing act. The perfect song has to pump a fighter up while settling his/her nerves and appeal to the crowd without appearing to pander. "My Walkout Song" is where we ask MMA fans who also happen to be famous musicians what makes for great pre-fight music and what song they would choose to accompany their walk to the cage.

You can't start a piece about Lydia Lunch without stating that she can and will kick your ass. Not because she's a fighter necessarily—not in the sense that Fightland means it at least—but because she will outlast you. On her own since she was 13 and weathering childhood sexual molestation, 1970s New York, 1980s New York (crack epidemic included), punk rock, No Wave, prostitution, drugs, mental institutions, lunatic men, and a raft of other life-destroying deals, Lunch has turned around and pulled a really big rabbit out of a very large hat by not only continuing to exist, but by doing so in style. With marks made in music, film, TV, publishing, plays, and performance the now-Barcelona resident maintains a heavy duty touring schedule and still has time left for the odd fight with UFC commentator Joe Rogan.

So we figured she'd know a few things about a few things. We asked her what song would be the best at filling a coliseum with the sound of sonic terror.

Lydia Lunch: Either the Junkyard by the Birthday Party or my next LP, Music to Murder By, which is a punishing excursion of death-grind horror core. It is an opera that illustrates the cleansing effects that well-focused violence has on the individual psyche—in whatever shape it may take, be it music, madness, murder, or MMA. It’s a collaboration with Weasel Walter.

What do you think of the music of MMA right now?
The music as it stands now seems to be pretty diverse, ranging from Hank Williams Jr.’s "I’d Love to Knock the Hell Out of You" to cheese-ball post-punk metal and every crappy genre in between. But great music always gets the blood pumping.

Read the rest at FIGHTLAND.