Which Metallica song opens with a melody interpolated from Leonard Bernstein’s “America”?

“Don’t Tread on Me” opens with a melody interpolated from Leonard Bernstein’s “America.”

The song appears as track six on Metallica’s 1991 album, commonly called The Black Album. Its opening uses a brief version of the melody associated with “America,” which Bernstein composed for the musical West Side Story. The reference is easy to miss because it is incorporated into the song’s arrangement rather than presented as a separate quotation.

“Don’t Tread on Me” also connects to the album’s cover imagery. The title comes from the motto on the Gadsden flag, whose coiled snake inspired the snake shown on the lower-right portion of the cover. That relationship makes the song one of the album’s clearest links between its music, title, and visual design.

Unlike the album’s five commercial singles, “Don’t Tread on Me” was issued to rock radio as a promotional release but did not receive a commercial single release. It remains one of the record’s shorter tracks, running four minutes exactly.

The song’s musical reference, political imagery, and placement in the album make it a particularly distinctive Black Album detail.