To all following this ongoing Maxim-fake-reviews saga (now starring Nas!) who suspected there might be something more devious afoot in Maxim’s editorial policy toward reviews, David Peisner, the Maxim free-lancer responsible for penning the two hypothetical reviews, agrees with you.

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In the first recorded instance of tact in its publishing history, Maxim has officially apologized to the Black Crowes for making up a bunch of stuff about what their album might have sounded like if they’d heard it. Says Maxim editorial director James Kaminsky in a statement released today:

“It is Maxim’s editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers.”

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Boy, what a week for vague and allusive journalism! A statement from stoner-scuzz rockers the Black Crowes suggests that Maxim’s two-and-a-half star rating for the band’s new album, “Warpaint,” in its March issue was based not on the band’s “slavish debt to the Stones, the Allmans and the Faces,” but on contributor David Peisner’s vivid imagination.

The band is crying shenanigans that because it hadn’t sent out advances of the album, the writer had no way of hearing it, and that Peisner instead hypothesized about what it might sound like. Which, given his wafflingly negative review (featuring non-starter jabs like “Now that they’re legitimately grizzled, they sound pretty much like they always have”), wasn’t all that great. That inventive approach to music criticism is, of course, completely not OK in even the most ethically elastic circles of New Journalism.

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