children of COB
Deadnight Drinker
Technically, Death Metal begins with Possessed
and Morbid Angel and Death aren't even that similar, it'd be hard as hell to compare the two.
So true, but still in their styloe they were huge pillars in the history of death metal. I'd say that death metal starts in California, and there there were loads of bands like Death/Mantas, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, etc...
Anyway, I think that Death's (while they were still Mantas) and Possessed's first demos may have started the whole death metal thing as a genre, but you'll never know who started composing or making death metal first, so I wouldn't go as far as assuring that some particular band started the thing, but I'd say it was the whole Florida thing with all those bands together.