Change the Rotation's 2013 albums of the year bracket beatdown

During the last month of 2013 and the first couple weeks of 2014, the Change the Rotation staff put our heads together to come up with our favorite albums of 2013. Steve O, Dave Anians and I each submitted our top picks. We narrowed that list down to 32 and bracketized it to see who would come out on top in a March Madness style throwdown. OK, the real inspiration for this came from that episode of "How I Met Your Mother" when Barney puts the names of all the women he has wronged into a bracket to figure out who is sabotaging him. We drew the 32 albums completely at random, resulting in some painful first round matchups. Some albums may have made it farther than they did with a different draw, while others benefitted and made it farther than they otherwise would have. In any case, I think we ended up with a winner that would have been hard to beat however the matchups came out.

RVIVR's "The Beauty Between" took the first region, starting off with one of the most painful first round matchups for me. I expected The Wild's record, "Dreams Are Maps" to make it a lot farther but drawing RVIVR in the first round was just bad luck. Same goes for Gogol Bordello drawing a first round faceoff with Red City Radio. Days N' Daze had two albums out in 2013, "Rogue Taxidermy" was the one in contention.

Streetlight Manifesto's likely final album, "The Hands That Thieve," came out on top in region two. Savages' album was one of my personal favorites this year, but I was in the minority on that one.

Our own Davey Dynamite swept the third region. He never voted for himself, so obviously Steve O and I were into his album "We're All In This Together." Big D and The Kids Table put out a double album of sorts this year, "Stomp" is the album that made the bracket. Bad Religion also had two albums this year, we nominated "True North" as one of 2013's best. Steve O was dismayed at Boysetsfire's first round loss, we may hear more on that from him later.

Caves' "Betterment" was the surprise album to make the final four. I was glad to see Lipstick Homicide's "Out Utero" make the elite eight. Off With Their Heads' "Home" may have made a deeper run with different matchups. The final four: "The Beauty Between" by RVIVR, "The Hands That Theive" by Streetlight Manifesto, "We're All In This Together" by Davey Dynamite, and "Betterment" by Caves.

RVIVR versus Streetlight was the matchup that took the longest for us to vote on. It was likely the toughest call of the whole bracket, but RVIVR prevailed. They faced off with Davey Dynamite in the final.

The winner of this bracket and Change the Rotation's selection as 2013's album of the year is "The Beauty Between" by RVIVR. We all loved this album, we all saw RVIVR play live in 2013 and there was no doubt they would be a tough out in this bracket. Now it's your turn to tell us what matchups you thought were whack, who we left out, and which albums were your favorites of the year.