When you finally cover a band that shaped how you think about hardcore, it means something. São Paulo’s Questions are premiering their version of Strife’s “To the End” today — a track from 1997’s “In this Defiance” that’s been in their heads since the 90s.
For Helio Suzuki, Strife arrived through a cassette in 1994. His brother Gustavo brought home “One Truth” and it just worked — hardcore and metal mixed right. Back then, international music came through tape trading and fanzines. Suzuki eventually got the “One Truth Live” VHS and saw the band actually play.
Around that time, he ran into his friend Kishi — roadieing for Iggor Cavalera — outside the Olympia venue. Kishi had just seen Strife in a small Phoenix room where Sepultura was living and said it was one of the best shows he’d caught. Iggor brought Strife on the Roots tour after that, connecting Brazilian and LA hardcore in a real way.
Strife went quiet in the early 2000s. Years later, Suzuki crossed paths with Iggor again, who mentioned the band had regrouped and wanted to play Brazil. Iggor connected him with Strife’s Andrew Kline, and in February 2011, Strife and Questions shared a stage in São Paulo. That show kicked off a friendship. Later that year, Suzuki toured Europe with them — their first proper run in years. He helped with their “Witness a Rebirth” recordings and wrote songs with the band.
This cover is giving something back. Pablo from Questions explains why Strife became a reference point. “When we discovered the band, back in the 90s, we identified very much with many of their messages and their sound. It brought together everything we liked about hardcore bands, like the attitude, speed and aggression, but it also had a weight in the production and vocals, which made a heavier hardcore influence clear.”
“In this Defiance” came out in 1997 and locked Strife in as one of the best of that era. “To an End” became one of the album’s anthems. Some tracks like “Force of Change” had straight edge messaging that mattered to the band’s stance then. But “To an End” works differently for Questions.
Pablo sees multiple readings in the lyrics. “When they talk about ‘choose to refuse self-destructive points of view’, the first thing that came to mind was the importance of youth refusing to use drugs. But, for us, it could also be other ‘self-destructive points of view’, such as the exploitation of man by man — corruption, injustices, wars — and nature by man.”
He continues: “It is the refusal to enter into the common sense that our society is the way it is because that would be an inevitable thing, that there is no other way. This challenging and questioning idea of the status quo is something we identify with a lot; for us, that’s what makes these lyrics so current and timeless.”
The idea of self-preservation has stretched over time. “Talking about ‘self-preservation’ today can mean not only the empowerment and self-protection of minorities, but also the self-preservation of humanity as a whole, in the face of the climate crisis and, unfortunately, an ever greater threat of a possible world war,” Pablo says.
Nearly 30 years after the album dropped, the message still holds. “It is very clear that to live is to always be ‘in defiance’.”
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