What is on the cover of Metallica's album, "Master of Puppets"?

White crosses are on the cover of Metallica's album Master of Puppets. The artwork shows a cemetery field filled with white crosses, each connected by strings to the hands of an unseen puppeteer in the sky.

The image was designed by Metallica and Peter Mensch and painted by artist Don Brautigam. Its visual metaphor reflects the album's central themes: manipulation, control, war, addiction, and the ways powerful forces can direct people's lives. The strings make the graves resemble puppets controlled from above, echoing the title track's idea of domination by an outside force.

The cover contains more than crosses. It also includes a blood-red and clouded sky, a glowing horizon, and military details such as a helmet and identification tag, suggesting a soldiers' cemetery. The album was released by Elektra Records on March 3, 1986, and was Metallica's third studio album. A common mix-up is answering “a cemetery” alone; that describes the scene, but the quiz's specific visible object is the field of white crosses.