The Gadsden flag inspired the snake image on the cover of Metallica’s self-titled album.
The original cover places a coiled snake in the lower-right corner beneath the band’s angled logo. The snake is derived from the Gadsden flag, an eighteenth-century American flag associated with the motto “Don’t Tread on Me.” That same motto also appears as the title of a song on the album, creating a deliberate connection between the artwork and the track list.
On the initial release, the logo and snake were embossed in black against the black background. Their low contrast made them difficult to see, which helped generate the album’s widely used nickname, The Black Album. Later editions used dark gray emblems that stand out more clearly.
The cover is also connected to a musical-pop-culture joke. In the documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica, the band acknowledged a resemblance to the fictional album Smell the Glove from This Is Spinal Tap. Lars Ulrich additionally cited Status Quo’s black Hello! cover as an inspiration.