Kreator - Reconquering the Throne
My Nominations:
Emperor - I Am the Black Wizards - I debated pretty hard about which black metal track I wanted to nominate, but at the end of the day I wanted something a bit timeless, and I think "I Am the Black Wizards" fits that quite well. Almost any song off of Emperor's first album could have gone here to be honest, that album is front to back fantastic.
Melvins - Boris - This list could use some sludge pretty badly in my opinion so here's my attempt to get some through. When it comes to pure, unadulterated sludge, few do it better than Melvins. As well as generally being one of Melvins' best songs, this song is also where Japanese Sludge/Doom/Stoner/whatever they want to be Metal legends Boris get their name from.
Death - Pull the Plug - Death is my favorite metal band, any genre. From their raw, sledgehammer-to-the-face roots of
Scream Bloody Gore to their later run of progressive death metal masterpieces, Death never put out a single album I don't enjoy to some extent (let's be real though
The Sound of Perseverance fans, that album does get a bit too wanky in places). This whole list could be Death songs and I would be fine with that. This particular song is not only important to Death's discography but death metal as a whole. Even in their later concerts where they would play pretty much none of their early material, Death almost always played "Pull the Plug", attesting to it's status as death metal classic.
Bonus: This list has enough thrash on it already, but here's what WOULD have been my thrash nomination:
Artillery - Khomaniac
If thrash is a slave to the (un)holy power of the riff, then I can't think of a band better than Artillery to represent it. Artillery run through more fantastic riffs in this song alone than in most lesser bands careers.