Two faces, Heals by day, Breaks by night
Morning comes, mask erased
By day, the kitchen window gives you the street. Switch on the light after dark and your own face appears where the street was, still wearing the expression you’ve used to put other people at ease. The woman who appears in the title track of 2Faces, the second album by Belgian-Spanish darkwave duo Bella Eterna, knows that change in the light. She heals by day and breaks by night. Gerd Van Geel drops to a murmur for “By day, she paints. By night, she falls.” The smiles she paints in daylight keep her hurt out of sight. After dark, her composure gives way, and she feels the weight of what she’s spent the day covering up.
The title also refers to the two faces Domingo J. Casas photographed for the sleeve. Van Geel, the voice of Belgium’s The Arch, wrote the lyrics and sings throughout, while JG Outsider, the Spanish producer also known as Javi Golo, composed, programmed, and mixed the album. They credit 2Faces with the way each sparked new ideas in the other. For Outsider, who came up in Spanish clubs, the project was a way back to the ’80s electronics and goth that first made him want to make records. There’s more room for guitar and bass this time, and you can hear the two working as one when a bass line keeps its footing, and Van Geel lets one of his characters lose theirs.
And the night has its own myriad performances from its cast strewn across the songs of 2Faces. In one, a woman traces every step in a ballroom that’s beginning to feel like a cage. In another, a clown puts on a frightening face, yet gives himself away with the teddy bear clutched in his hand. Van Geel’s characters keep looking for a way out of the parts they’ve learned, whether that means burning the fairytale they were given or admitting what they still want. And the album’s first song asks what happens if a grown man decides he’s spent long enough acting his age.
“When I Grow Up,” the opener and lead single, begins with a bell-like figure, its rough edge hinting at guitar before reverb blurs it into something harder to name. As the drums arrive, Van Geel’s wordless cry slips into a growl, then settles into a croon with Gary Numan’s chilly poise. A rippling synth pattern keeps the song in motion while guitar notes thread through the spaces around his voice. He sings of wanting to laugh after dark and chase thunder through a world of “concrete dreams,” where there’s always a deadline pulling him back. The line “When I grow up, I want to be a child” places childhood just ahead of him, still within reach even after that choice has seemingly slipped away. The chorus rises with the abandon of someone who has already run out into the rain.
Van Geel sets the song’s video in a circus, where grown-ups make play look like work. A boy in a bowler keeps red balls aloft; a stilt walker in striped trousers looms above the troupe; a hoop spins as its performer lowers herself into a split. The clown’s painted smile remains fixed, though his eyes have already surrendered. At one point, he is rigged like a marionette, foreshadowing the dancer in the next song. In the final wide shot, he stands alone beneath the red-and-gold drapery, arms spread toward rows of empty seats.
Watch the video for “When I Grow Up” below.
The synth pads on “Break the Cage” exhale a Baroque melody, conjuring a ballroom scented with hot wax, flowers, and wine still lingering on someone’s breath. Beneath Van Geel, a supple synth bass glides as the woman in his song takes the floor, each marionette-precise step shadowed by a soul in debt. The arrangement could score the scene in Ridley Scott’s Legend where Princess Lili merges with her black gown, the rapture of the dance helping keep her ensnared. By the time Van Geel sings, “Burn the fairytale, break the cage,” the story that trapped her is the first thing she’s ready to set aflame.
On “2Faces,” a booming kick and snare dissolve into the bright sizzle of hi-hat and a scatter of handclaps. Van Geel stretches each vowel across a cool, crystalline guitar line, then sinks to a murmur as the Joker calls. A touch of Gotham enters the life of a woman who spends her days painting over cracks. Both faces wear the “Same disguise”—perhaps even the devil’s grin is just another expression she has learned to put on. When Van Geel’s voice rises again on “Lipstick, lies and gold,” you can almost see her preparing to face the room.
Low guitar tones give the synth melody in “Magic Tree” the hush and contour of a nocturne. Outsider lets the beat dissolve, then quietly restores it with a synth bass beneath Van Geel’s account of a body surrendering to the earth. First the legs go numb; soon, twigs are pushing through a human skull. Van Geel delivers the rising refrain with such composure that the bargain feels almost reasonable. The body that once could run can, at last, remain. By the time he calls himself the tree, he sounds almost at home.
In “Pink Teddy,” a clown lies beside a staged crime scene, clutching a toy bear. Outsider lends the tableau the menace of early Skinny Puppy, driven by an EBM bass sequence, low-slung synth notes, and eerie chimes. Van Geel begins submerged in reverb, then steps into the foreground with the clipped cadence of Al Jourgensen-era Ministry. The scene unfolds with the crooked logic of a Legendary Pink Dots fable—until Van Geel sings “He wanted love,” opening into a melody made for a roomful of voices. The bear remains a child’s thing in the hands of a man who has gone to considerable lengths to look frightening.
A metallic bass synth ricochets against the kickdrum on “Ballet for Sea Gods” as Van Geel sends his dancers plunging past teeth and scales. He begins with the air of someone recounting a tale handed down through generations. Then the drums crash into the refrain, and his voice gathers force until you can feel the dancers’ debt to the gods below. They dance to keep them asleep; every breath is part of the price. The tides alone bear witness.
The guitar riff on “Burn” retains its icy edge as the synths swell and the drums press in. A few notes echo Van Geel’s voice as he sings of a half-spider creature spinning a kingdom for itself in the swamp. His voice rises on “A thousand hungers burn inside,” before the chorus urges the creature to rise and fight. It already rules the mire on shattered knees—a detail that lends the command a cost. The record opened with the freedom of running out into the rain. By the end of its original tracks, simply getting to your feet in the mud demands everything you have.
After the incandescent “Burn,” David Kano and Juanjo Reig return to the album’s opening track with their “When I Grow Up” (Cycle Remix). This pared-back post-punk reprise rekindles the promise of a childhood not yet outgrown—and offers a welcome reprieve.
The final slot goes to “2Faces” (Parissior Remix), recast as ’90s-inspired electronica. The lead single and title track both return in fresh disguises, delivering one last twist on the album’s central idea: even a familiar face can still surprise.
2Faces is a perfect darkwave record, with dark synth-pop choruses that make you want to sing at full volume about the things people spend all day hiding.
The album is available digitally and on limited black vinyl through Mots Music. Listen to 2Faces below and order it here
Gerd Van Geel, also known as CUVG, started behind the drums in The Arch, the Belgian band formed in Breendonk in 1986. Producer Ludo Camberlin had the members try the vocal parts in the studio, and Van Geel wound up as the lead singer. The band’s 1990 track “Ribdancer” became a cult favorite in Spain. Van Geel also works behind the camera, directing Bella Eterna’s video for “Mysterious Beauty” from the Fire EP.
JG Outsider is Javier Gómez, the Alicante-born, Murcia-based DJ and producer also known as Javi Golo. He began DJing in 1984 and producing for Pink Records in 1992, then co-founded Essential, a label focused on vocal and progressive trance. His work as JG Outsider took him back to the EBM and industrial music that drew him in as a young DJ, territory he explored on his 2024 album Despierto for Cold Transmission.
Bella Eterna grew out of two reworkings of songs by The Arch. Outsider remixed “Phantom Chase” in 2020, then revisited “Ribdancer” for a Banshees Records tribute in 2023. The pair began writing together between Belgium and Spain, releasing their debut album Pornographic Shadows through Unknown Pleasures Records in 2024. Strictly Tempo put out Fire the following year, with Alpha Sect’s remix of “Me and the Desert”.
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