Death: Scream Bloody Gore
Death's later works might have been the height of technical/progressive death metal, but early on they were dirtier than a whore's underwear. This, their debut, is probably my favorite of their's and is everything that I love about eighties extreme metal. It's just right in that sweet spot between black, thrash, and death metal where it's raw, simple, ugly, and brutal. Nothing pretty or subtle about this album, just pure awesomeness.
Chuck Schuldiner was one of the best DM vocalists of all time, his voice is a hideous rasp that, along with the heavy hardcore punk influence, really propels the music at a breakneck pace with bags of energy. And speaking of hardcore, I remember hearing that some members of an earlier Death line-up left to form Repulsion who would go on to release the first ever grindcore album,
Horrified, and while
Scream Bloody Gore isn't grind, it's definitely got many of the same influences and isn't at all shy to go into a proto-blast-and-grind mode that isn't a million miles away from Napalm Death at times.
R.I.P. Chuck.