While I doubt anyone would say it's an "essential" album I'd recommend you give Hypocrisy's 2002 album Catch 22 a try. The band was one of the early Swedish melodic death metal bands that managed to be up there in terms of heaviness with the regular death metal bands, yet still managed to ride the popularity of bands like At the Gates, Dark Tranquility, and In Flames. Catch 22 wasn't well received because a prominent melodeath metal band had "betrayed" their roots, but I think the album has a lot of potential and is easily one of the best albums to showcase nu metal's potential. Definitely don't expect it to sound like Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Korn, or any of the really popular nu metal bands, however it does share a lot of parallels, particularly the drumming.
The album was remixed and later rereleased in 2008, however that version really strips away a lot of the nu metal sound, so I'd say check out the original 2002 version before trying the latter version.
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