Yeah, what you're forgetting though you see, along with a lot of others, is that this is an 'essential records' list. Not a 'your favourite records of all time' list. It should be the basics and the classics, with personal bias of course, but still. There's no Skyclad on the list for example, unthinking for me. And there's many better punk albums than Never Mind the Bollocks, however it has to be included for it's seminal nature. There are tonnes of classic albums and artists from every genre left off (I'd mention Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nosferatu and Christian Death for goth before MLWtTKK personally), but that's besides the point. I tried to fulfill the purpose, with only a few cop-outs (seriously though, that Dead Can Dance box set will be some of the best money you ever spend). Now, if we were talking 'essential black metal albums'* or something, it would be totally different of course.
No not forgetting that at all.
Painkiller for example, is a great Priest album. But not nearly as seminal or even essential as
Screaming For Vengeance or, better yet,
British Steel when considering the strengths and high points for the group's work as a whole.
Similarly, while
Angst includes the brilliant "Sucks" and "A Drug Against War," it's nowhere near as "essential" a KMFDM album as
Naive.
So in the end, if we're talking about essential albums that
everyone should own then we need to think about the term in the abstract, regardless of personal preference in sound and taste. I'm with you, more or less, on your choices for Bauhaus and even the Sisters of Mercy, as those two choices would no doubt represent the best of their respective works and the defining sound for each specific band. But whereas Bauhaus represents an essential album, since that was more or less the defining element of the goth sound, I don't know that SoM's
Floodland would warrant the same attention.
So what then is the criteria for essential? Essential for you is obviously something different than what it is to me, but either way it needs to be something that either (a) shook the foundations of music and/or changed the landscape of a respective sound or genre, and/or (b) represents the absolute best of said genre/artist. SoM may fall into the b category, but nothing they did was extraordinarily influential.
That said, while I made comments on what you consider to be essential, I never really gave any of my own. A few:
Queen - A Night At The Opera
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
The Beatles - The White Album
Fleetwood Mac - s/t
Orbital - Orbital
The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld
Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded
Run D.M.C. - Raising Hell
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
LTJ Bukem Presents - Logical Progression
Metalheadz Presents - Platinum Breakz