The band began working on "Humbug," its third album and the follow-up to 2007's "Favourite Worst Nightmare," after an appearance at last summer's Latitude Festival in the UK.

"We went to Latitude, ripped it up, wrote on our faces and eventually wrote some songs," frontman Alex Turner told NME.com earlier this spring. "We spent the first day there on the most complicated riff you've ever heard. It goes round in seven-and-a-half-time. We used it in the end; it's on an intro. It was like [Black] Sabbath."

The group worked with co-producers James Ford (Klaxons, Last Shadow Puppets) and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age on the album, which was recorded both in New York with Ford and on Homme's home turf of Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert. The set is due in stores Aug. 25.

Arctic Monkeys were formed in Sheffield, England, in 2003, about one year after singer/guitarist Turner and guitarist Jamie Cook, both teenagers at the time, received their first guitars as Christmas presents. The band released its debut album, "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not," in 2006.