Abattoir Blues and The Lyre of Orpheus is the best Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds album! (Actually a double album).
His sound has changed a lot from the first Bad Seeds album, From Her to Eternity, in 1984 (even that was a big change from his previous band, The Birthday Party), and varied so much over the years that it’s hard to say where to start or even point to one album as emblematic of the whole. Listening to From Her to Eternity (very bluesy & more traditional rock and punk) and his latest, Ghosteen (nearly all analog synths, almost no guitar, bass or drums), it‘s hard to imagine they were made by the same singer/songwriter (though the Bad Seeds lineup has changed a lot since 1984, especially with Warren Ellis taking Mick Harvey’s place for the last dozen or so years as Cave’s main songwriting partner; other than Harvey and Blixa leaving though, they’ve had a pretty stable core lineup since the early ‘90s).
Perhaps the best place to start is the 3-disc, career-spanning compilation, Lovely Creatures, released in 2017, to get a good flavor of the whole arc of Cave’s career and artistic progression.