German/Norwegian gothic metallers LEAVES' EYES have confirmed the title of their new record as Meredead. Band vocalist/keyboardist and producer Alexander Krull (also ATROCITY) is doing the final mix of Meredead at Mastersound Studio. The artwork (below) was created by Stefan Heilemann.

Meredead will be released on the April 22nd in Germany, Austria and Switzerland via Napalm Records. More street dates will follow soon.

Singer Liv Kristine comments: "As we began composing the first song ideas for our fourth full-length album, all of us were very eager to take another step in strengthening both the individual sound and concept of Leaves' Eyes, like we have done album by album. Along with the song-writing process, I made up my mind about the songs' themes, and drowned myself in different sources of literature. Some songs clearly needed lyrics rooted in northern history and culture, as well as having mystical themes. Being an Old-English fan, I decided to write some of the lyrics in Old-English, which of course included further studies of grammatical and phonetic knowledge, which I really enjoyed doing. Next to modern English and Old-English, some songs are sung in traditional Norwegian, to keep their strong individuality and focus on certain themes from special genres in Norwegian traditional singing. The album is given the title Meredead, as one of the songs on the album. It is my own word-creation (at least I haven't found it in a dictionary yet), and it may mean both 'dead by/in the sea', or 'the mortal or killing sea.' In my lyrics you will find traditional themes from Viking literature and Norwegian song tradition, moreover, tales from the Irish isles, some from already existing sources, some made up myself. Sometimes you will hear about men going on adventures, some ending up drowing in the sea, their wives, evil witches, three-headed trolls, or spell-bound princesses, as well as marble halls and blood-thirsty creatures. I allowed myself more freedom for the concept of Meredead, telling a number of different stories, real, mystical or sometimes maybe even both."

As previously reported, Meredead features the Lingua Mortis Orchestra and Victor Smolski (RAGE) as well as the choir Al Dente, who also worked with the band on previous releases.