Which artist created the cover art for Metallica's album "Load"?

Andres Serrano created the cover art for Metallica’s album “Load.” The image is based on Serrano’s 1990 artwork “Blood and Semen III,” made by pressing bovine blood and his own semen between sheets of Plexiglas.

Guitarist Kirk Hammett discovered Serrano’s work in the book Body and Soul, bought from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He initially saw the abstract red-and-white image as resembling hot-rod flames and thought its shape would work strikingly as an album cover.

The artwork became one of Metallica’s most controversial visual changes. Some band members admired it, while bassist Jason Newsted disliked it and James Hetfield worried retailers might reject the album. Anton Corbijn, another name sometimes associated with Load, photographed the band for the booklet but did not create the cover art.

Released in 1996, Load also marked a major musical and image shift: Metallica moved further from thrash metal toward hard rock, adopted a simplified logo, and presented a shorter-haired, more fashion-conscious look. Serrano also supplied the artwork for the 1997 follow-up Reload, using a different biological-material image.