Last week, it emerged that Maxim had made the rather curious decision of awarding the new Black Crowes album, Warpaint, a mediocre two-and-a-half stars out of five in its March issue—despite the fact that the reviewer had heard only one song from the album. (The Crowes' label hadn't made advance copies of the album available for review, which means it probably does suck, but that's not the point!) An editor at the magazine responded by making the even more curious claim that, while the magazine of course prefers to hear music before casting judgment on it, "an educated guess" is acceptable when this is not possible. An editor higher on the magazine's masthead is now admitting otherwise.

Today, in an online statement, editorial director James Kaminsky acknowledged that it's probably not good form to critically review albums you haven't really heard:

"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."

The question that remains to be answered is whether or not the Maxim reviewer will change his rating now that the album is actually available for review. (Rolling Stone gave it a respectable three-and-a-half out of five stars.) Our e-mails for comment have yet to be returned, but we'll alert you if and when they are.