A snake appears in the lower-right area of Metallica’s 1991 album cover, The Black Album.
The cover is intentionally restrained: it uses a nearly black field, the band’s logo, and a faint gray snake image. The design creates a stark visual identity that helped inspire the album’s informal nickname, even though the official title is simply Metallica.
The snake connects visually with “Don’t Tread on Me,” a song on the album whose title echoes the motto associated with the Gadsden flag. The cover image is subtle rather than brightly illustrated, so it can be easy to miss when viewed at small size or in dark digital thumbnails.
The album artwork is often described as a black cover with a snake, but it is not an eagle, wolf, or scorpion. Those animals may appear in other rock imagery or in fan-made designs, which contributes to occasional mix-ups. The snake is the specific animal included in the original cover artwork, positioned near the lower-right portion of the sleeve.