What snake appears on the cover of Metallica's The Black Album?

Metallica's The Black Album cover features a coiled snake derived from the Gadsden flag.

The cover places the band's angled logo in the upper-left corner and the faint snake in the lower-right. On the initial release, both images were embossed so subtly against the black background that they were difficult to see. This design gave the self-titled album its widely used nickname, The Black Album.

The snake also connects the packaging to the album's song “Don't Tread on Me.” That phrase is the motto associated with the Gadsden flag, whose historical imagery inspired the snake used on the cover. The artwork therefore links a visual emblem to a track title without making the album's official name anything other than Metallica.

The cover has sometimes been compared with the black packaging of Spinal Tap's fictional album Smell the Glove, a joke acknowledged in Metallica's documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. The snake is not a skull, dragon, or panther, and the original cover does not display a brightly colored flag; its restrained design is central to the album's identity.