London metal band Kittie begins recording a new album with a Jersey rock icon next month.

"We are pleased to announce that we will finally be entering the studio on July 15, to record our fourth full-length release," the band says on its blog at myspace.com/officialkittie.

Original members are singer/guitarist Morgan Lander and her sister, drummer Mercedes Lander.

More recent arrivals -- guitarist Tara McLeod, formerly with Strathroy-area band Sherry, and bassist Trish Doan, who played with London rockers HER -- joined in 2005.

The Lander sisters, who grew up in Byron, have been with Kittie since its beginnings in London about 10 years ago. Kittie has sold hundreds of thousands of recordings with a variety of lineups.

The new album will be produced in New Jersey by Jack Ponti, a recording-industry veteran.

Ponti has worked with Bon Jovi, Skid Row and Alice Cooper, among others.

A guitarist, producer and songwriter, Ponti was in a Jersey band called The Rest in the 1970s which included a young Jon Bon Jovi.

Ponti never became as famous as some other Jersey rockers, but is a star within the industry. He retired from the business in the 1990s but has returned to take up Kittie and other indie projects.

The record will be out early next year, says Dave Lander, Kittie's manager and the Lander sisters' father. Kittie has about 16 songs ready as it prepares to enter the studio, Dave Lander says.

"It'll be out in March, the early part of March ... the first quarter of '07," he says.

The 2007 Kittie album will also be on Kittie's own new label, Kiss of Infamy Records.

The project is a partnership between Kittie and the Ponti-backed Platform Group. It will be supported by an 18-month marketing plan under the deal, Lander says.

Distribution through a major label has been arranged with details to be available later, he says.

Kittie recorded its third album, Until the End, in 2004. Kittie's first CD, Spit, was released in 2000.