A snake appears in the artwork for Metallica's 1991 album, known as The Black Album.
The cover is almost entirely black, with the band's logo near the upper-left corner and a faint gray coiled snake visible in the lower-right area. The understated design helped inspire the album's enduring nickname.
The snake connects the cover to the song “Don't Tread on Me,” whose title and imagery draw on the Gadsden flag and its famous rattlesnake emblem. The artwork is deliberately subtle, so the animal can be easy to miss when the cover is viewed at small size.
The album's official title is Metallica, not The Black Album. The nickname is informal but nearly universal among fans, and it also distinguishes the record from other releases that have been called black albums because of their packaging or title.