A snake appears as a coiled figure on the cover of Metallica’s 1991 album, The Black Album.
The cover shows Metallica’s logo in the upper-left corner and a coiled snake in the lower-right. The snake is derived from the Gadsden flag, an eighteenth-century American symbol associated with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” That motto also gives its name to one of the album’s songs.
On the original release, both the logo and snake were embossed so subtly against the black background that they were difficult to see. This nearly monochromatic design helped create the nickname The Black Album, even though the official title is Metallica.
The cover’s minimal design has sometimes been compared with the fictional album Smell the Glove from the film This Is Spinal Tap. Metallica acknowledged that resemblance humorously in its documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica.