Arctics to release third LP in August

Arctic Monkeys will release their third studio album "sometime in August", drummer Matt Helders has said.

The band's follow-up to 2007's Favourite Worst Nightmare does not have an exact release date, but Helders claimed that the album will be finished in time for their Reading and Leeds festival headline slots in the summer.

"It's all recorded now, yeah. We're about halfway through mixing it at the moment," he told Drowned In Sound. "I'm not sure about a release date, it'll probably be sometime in August before Leeds and Reading.

"Nothing's definite, though, it all depends on when we do the artwork and pick a title. And we've not finalised the tracklisting yet, we're mixing quite a few and then narrowing it down - so it also depends on how long we take doing that.

"We'll probably do it in the next week or so, sort it all out."

Helders also downplayed expectations that the record will have a "heavier" sound thanks to producer Josh Homme.

"Bits of it are in [Favourite Worst Nightmare's] direction, but there's some quite melodic things as well," he said. "It's not, like a 'heavy' album, though there are elements of that."