"Don't Tread on Me" is the Metallica song on The Black Album whose intro interpolates a melody from West Side Story's "America."
The melody was composed by Leonard Bernstein for the musical West Side Story. On Metallica's album, the quotation appears at the beginning of the track before the song moves into its heavy-metal arrangement. This is an interpolation rather than a separate cover version of the musical number.
The song's title and imagery connect to the Gadsden flag, whose motto is "Don't Tread on Me." The album cover also depicts a coiled snake derived from that flag, linking the song's title and the record's visual design.
Although the song was issued to rock radio after the album's release, it did not receive a commercial single release. That detail sometimes causes it to be confused with the album's five official commercial singles: "Enter Sandman," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters," "Wherever I May Roam," and "Sad but True."