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And so 2023 ends with a song that’s received numerous requests over the course of several years… one of the greatest final boss themes in gaming, The Serpent that Devours the Horizon from Bravely Default!

A quick note: this song has gone by a few different names, mostly Serpent Eating the Ground, but I’ve also seen mixups of this variant and Serpent that Devours the Horizon as well (such as Serpent Eating the Horizon or Serpent Devouring the Ground, etc). The official title of the track, according to the official soundtrack release, is Uroboros, the Serpent that Devours the Horizon…. although, in-game, the final boss is spelled Ouroboros, so unless there’s some fun Uroboros fact I’m unaware of, I assume that part is a typo. I’m rather fond of the official interpretation, so I’ll personally be labelling this version as Ouroboros: The Serpent that Devours the Horizon.

The requests for this song, as usual, started with my first cover from the game’s soundtrack back in 2015 with That Person’s Name Is (actually titled That of the Name). 4 years later I introduced the GaMetal Song Ballot. While Serpent didn’t have more than a handful of votes on the first ballot, it did place #8 overall the following year in 2020, #9 in 2022, and #14 in the most recent 2023 ballot. Most of the popular songs that I don’t get around to covering tend to fall off when the next ballot comes around, but Serpent has managed to maintain a strong presence in ballot requests over the years.

I felt like this song was already perfectly arranged, so aside from the intro, I didn’t change too much about it. It would’ve felt wrong to me to change some of the instruments handling the melodies at certain points of the song to lead guitar, especially when they tended to be followed up by a lead guitar section any way.

I hope you all enjoyed the song line-up for 2023! I’ve got some awesome things planned for the years ahead, so stick around!