I would view Deicide as the entry-level death metal band, if anything. Back when I was 20 and first getting into DM and starting with the Florida bands, I thought their whole "Fuck God, Fuck Christians, etc" schtick was awesome to throw back in the face of the pious people I didn't get along with, but now at 28 it just falls flat with me and I've found plenty of other bands that have done the anti-Christian/anti-religion angle much better and more intelligently than Glen Benton's perpetually adolescent rage against the heavens. As for the actual music, the first two albums are classic, the second two are decent, and everything after Serpents I just can't listen to anymore. It doesn't also help when Benton uses various studio effects to try and make his voice "scarier" or, in more recent years, to cover for his age and inability to growl anymore
It is funny though, thinking about MA as an entry-level band, since that was the only death metal song ("God of Emptiness") I ever heard on mainstream radio, back when the Wichita alternative/metal station used to have the Z-Rock 50 on Sunday nights in the early-mid 90's. It didn't get me into DM and actually elicited laughs among metal friends of mine with the "Bow to me faithfully, bow to me splendidly" line (which was also later lampooned on Beavis and Butthead). Later on, when I purchased Covenant, I would still laugh at it, but otherwise that was a damn good CD imo. I'm not as big on the Tucker albums but I love the four Vincent albums so much that MA has always had a spot on my top five DM list (as noted earlier this thread)