A snake appears in the lower-right portion of Metallica's The Black Album cover design.
The cover is predominantly black and uses a subtle black-on-black composition. The band's familiar logo appears near the upper-left area, while a coiled snake is visible toward the lower-right. The restrained artwork helped create the nickname The Black Album, although the record's official title is simply Metallica.
The snake also connects the packaging to the album's song “Don't Tread on Me,” whose title and lyrics draw on the Gadsden flag's famous snake imagery. That connection is why the cover image is sometimes described as a thematic symbol rather than a random decoration.
The dark cover is occasionally confused with the album's exact official name. Metallica did not formally title the record The Black Album; that phrase is a widely used nickname adopted by fans, critics, and the music industry because of the artwork's nearly monochrome appearance.