A snake appears beside the band logo on the cover of Metallica's The Black Album.
The cover is deliberately restrained: it is almost entirely black, with a coiled snake and the band's logo presented in dark, low-contrast artwork. The minimal design helped produce the nickname The Black Album, even though the official title is simply Metallica.
The snake connects the cover to “Don't Tread on Me,” a song on the album. That song draws on the Gadsden flag's imagery, which traditionally features a rattlesnake and the warning “Don't Tread on Me.” The cover does not reproduce the entire flag, but the snake is a recognizable visual reference.
The album's artwork was designed by Stephen Gorman, based on a concept by James Hetfield. The imagery is sometimes mistaken for a generic band emblem, but it is specifically a snake associated with the record's themes.