Some very good suggestions, and not just the already well-known stuff among mainstream audiences from most of the other comments.

I would personally cite Cocteau Twins over This Mortal Coil, not only did they predate them, but Treasure is also the better (and more influential) record in my opinion.

Therion has been quite explicit with its acknowledgment of Celtic Frost as a major influence (even taking the name) - though their records suffer from subpar production, and one could argue Therion was able to fulfill the ambition of Celtic Frost.

One shouldn't mention no wave without mentioning Swans, who were massively influential to grunge, post-punk, post-rock and heavy music in general. The colossal Soundtracks for the Blind is their magnum opus.

Aside from Kraftwerk, the krautrock scene spawned several more highly influential groups, including Neu! (who invented the remix), CAN (cited as a major influence by Radiohead and many others) and Popul Vuh (pioneers of early ambient, electronic and "new age" music).

A few more suggestions not related to yours:
Oddly enough Zappa hasn't been mentioned yet in the comments (as of writing this comment), probably the most influential pop music artist of the 20th Century, though his music can be challenging at times and not all of his humour has aged very well. We're Only In It For the Money is probably the best starting point.

Brian Eno - Apollo. Not Eno's first ambient album, but probably his most accomplished one.

Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden. It's hard to believe you are listening to what used to be a new wave band only a few years earlier if you play this record. It was so far ahead of its time their label dropped them amidst an acrimonious lawsuit.

Ulver has been cited as a major influence by modern electronic music artists (e.g., Carpenter Brut). Their output is extremely diverse and creatively shifts dramatically from album to album. I would recommend Perdition City as a starting point.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A#∞. Not coincidentally released shortly after Soundtracks for the Blind, a massive creative leap nonetheless and one of the defining post-rock records of the 1990s.

Steely Dan's Aja includes the first recorded rock shuffle thanks to Bernard Purdie. Not to mention Steve Gadd's masterpiece solo on the title track.

I almost picked Pet Sounds myself! Such an incredible album, so much invention and depth ❤️

Album doesn't mean much to me I'm afraid. I mean an opera (which literally means 'a work') could be considered an album? What about a symphony (which could means 'a body of (harmonious) sounds')?
And what about all tho the other types of music?

They were not released as 'albums' (no disc players, back then) but they were released as a coherent ensemble one was expected to listen to as a whole, in a certain order. And they were released as printed editions too as, back then, owning music sheets was the equivalent of what purchasing albums is/was to us: people would buy them in order to be able to read the score and to play it by themselves or with friends ;)

Great list. I'm a bit confused by the Hotline Miami/post-punk bit though. By the time the game comes out we'd just had a decade of post-punk revival bands with great albums and even some level of mainstream success. Bands like Interpol, the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Killers.

I'm referring rather to what is popularly known as ‘doomer music’, which includes coldwave, some darkwave, and post-punk, and to my knowledge emerged as a meme around mid-2010s. Molchat Doma are the prime exemplar of the genre. Netlabels like Detriti Records and Russian post-punk and online places like Harakiri Diat were cranking out both fresh gloomy music and some classic 80s-style sound. Dark Entries Records reissued some cool stuff from way back in the day.

Personally I'm unmoved by most indie-adjacent rock (while digging original old post-punk), but getting into modern underground-ish post-punk and darkwave really paid off, even though I was rather late to the party.

Check out e.g. toska po domu, My friend tape recorder, Dirty Beaches, Artificial intelligence created by a smart creature, Karl Kave, to some extent margenrot, ‘DETHWAVE MIX 2014’ by BLACkMOON77, and not least Glintshake and Inturist. And Filmmaker for the company.

Thanks for the additional context! I'll have to check those out

gybe - lysf

looks like part of a serial number.

Radiohead OK Computer

The first grunge album that I know of was Green River's Rehab Doll in 1988.

Tony*

I've never been huge on hip hop, but Illmatic was one of the ones that slipped through my metal net. Wonderful record.

Rage Against the Machine's first public show is on YouTube. It's remarkable how they arrived almost fully formed.

The debut album was released 13 months after that performance, but tracks like Know Your Enemy sound almost identical to the recorded version.

As much as I enjoyed Pet Sounds when I was younger, it wasn't until it was pointed out to me that it was one of the first albums by a big act to not be written around live performance that I began to realise its significance. Almost every other album released on major labels at the time was in service of selling tickets to live shows, along with copies of the records. They were full of songs to sing and dance along to.

Pet Sounds was an album that was best enjoyed at home on a decent sound system.

Pet Sounds is a work of art that happens to contain some incredible pop music that must have pissed off the other members of the Beach Boys as they listened to it and tried to figure out how the hell they were supposed to perform it live. But Brian made a damn good go of saying what he needed to say with it, and that was what was important to him.

I heard Remanufacture before I heard Demanufacture, so there'll always be a larger part of my heart devoted to Rhys Fulber's remix of Self Bias Resistor than the original. But yeah, Demanufacture is an incredible record. That era of industrial metal transports me back to some incredibly sweaty venues.

In terms of bringing existing black music to white audiences, sure, but Elvis and Jerry weren't really doing anything that wasn't already being done.

Every album I really like should be on this list. Every album you really like should be on this list. You cannot rationalize subjectivity.

Yeah them and Mud Honey and the Melvins were ones we read about in Raygun and rolling stone magazines.

Pet sounds and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are what I think of as the first studio driven albums and I can to them later in life after just ignoring the pop song hits that always played on the radio.

Amazing sounds with a good set of headphones.

Miles Davis:

• Kind of Blue
• In a Silent Way
• Bitches Brew
• Tutu

Cornerstone records from which everything from the Headhunters, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra and the great exploration of jazz, psychedelic, rock and everything else in between.

Good call with Angel Dust. King For a Day, Fool For A Lifetime completes the syllabus.

I did a big write up about how this is a thought-terminating cliche, but it felt too much like preachy lecturing, so I'll try a different tack: why do you feel that subjectivity cannot be rationalized?

Looks like a bash shell command to me

yeah, but syntax error because of the extra space.

The Ramones' Ramones.

Factoid: They used the name Ramone based off a fake name Paul McCartney used at hotels, Paul Ramon.

Any album by William Hung, the songbird of our generation

Portishead - Portishead

Fang's album landshark. Just saw them play last night they are amazing.

I'll tell you two such bands: The Beatles and Iron Butterfly.

From what I've heard, progressive rock threw away the influence of black musicians that was there in blues and rock'n'roll, and continued in the European and ‘academic’/art music tradition instead.

I'm not versed in music theory anywhere near enough to tell if this is really true, though.

No one had mentioned Stg. Pepper yet. Am album that took advantage of creative studio sound tricks to create sounds that were not easily possible to replicate during a love performance. An album that inspired so many others to push recording further.

Kidz Bop volume 1 launched an empire of children performing family friendly covers of pop songs that continues to weaken the fabric of humanity to this day.

There's a few second drum break on a 7 inch single from The Winston's that was successful as a sample called the amen break.

As good as this album is, it wasn’t breaking the mold as much as we might think. And Ozzy was not a good dude. He did some heinous things.

I always thought Kidz Bop was just a cheap knock-off of the Mini Pops (Not to be confused with the Mini Pop Kids), especially since the first Kidz Bop album came out 18 years after "We're the Mini Pops" rose to the top of the charts.

Side 1

Side 2

Man, I remember hearing a Kidz Bop version of Follow Me by Uncle Kracker and just thinking "really?"

Switched-On Bach was the stuff, I still listen to it

All I remember from my brother listening to that album is the short track with the album title. "Come with us, we'll sail the seas of cheese"

Check out ‘Digital William Tell Overture’ (particularly the finale), and ‘The Theiving Magpie’ from the same guy. And perhaps also ‘Infernal Galop hard synth remix’ and Reggae Far East's ‘Turkish March’.

John McLaughlin, My Goals Beyond.

Tom Waits, Swordfish Trombone.

Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

The Residents, Commercial Album.

Speak English Or Die by Stormtroopers of Death. Whipped up in a week and recorded using Anthrax's leftover studio time, this album bridged hardcore and metal. Metallica and Slayer were already popular with some punks but SEOD didn't take itself seriously and had a DIY vibe

Radiohead - in rainbows

They tried to go outside the existing studio release system before the rise of streaming. It was a pay what you want release.

Nirvana - unplugged in new York

Took a backlash to overproduced music at the time and started a still going strong tradition of publishing live albums.

Air - moon safari

Took electronic music and added a soul with otherworldly sounds and production to make chill out music that could be played in a club or on the beach or in a park with friends.

Dusty Springfield - Dusty in memphis
Dusty brought back music to white people. There is a long tradition of white artists taking black music and presenting it palatably to white audiences. From elvis to P!nk. however, the UK as a more melting pot society without segregation, doesn't see it as cultural appropriation, but just another style for anyone to sing. That tradition continues with Amy winehouse and adele today.

Me neither I just read a magazine about king crimson and I probably only remembered the parts I found amusing. Could be they had more cohesion than my post claims.

But the thematics of the first album is not as planned as some would like to think and fripp was very vocal that female groupies was one of his biggest drives.

Interestingly, Roots was inspired by the first nu-metal albums, especially Korn's first album. That's crazy to me and i would have guessed it was the other way around.

WE BELONG TOGETHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaooooooouugghh

I first encountered kidz bop about 2010ish when my wife's sister was playing it for her kids at a family gathering. I'm still scarred from the experience. That day I vowed if I ever had kids that travesty would never be allowed in my house. Since having a daughter I've endured Frozen, Taylor Swift, and Kpop demon hunters. But the evil that is Kidz Bop has never graced a speaker in our house!