The much-anticipated new U2 album “No Line On The Horizon” will be released on March 2, 2009.

It’s the Irish group’s 12th studio album and is their first release since “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” in late 2004.

Bono and the boys began writing and recording the new disc in Fez, Morocco. Additional sessions took place in New York, Dublin and London.

The album will include tracks “Unknown Caller” and “Moment of Surrender,” and will feature production from regular U2 collaborators Brian Eno (who most recently worked on Coldplay’s Viva La Vida) and Daniel Lanois with additional production by Steve Lillywhite.

In an interview last month, The Edge told Mojo the new album “is a record of two halves. One half is songs that came virtually fully-formed out of sessions we did with Brian and Danny – stuff we’ve only played once or maybe twice and that’s it: just the raw moment of creation. Then the other half is material we’ve kicked around a while and went through the usual cycle of versions and incarnations. It sounds like a U2 album but it doesn’t sound like anything we’ve done before and it doesn’t really sound like anything that’s happening at the moment.”

Hopefully it’s better than the last one. I hope this record does for U2 what “Accelerate” did for REM .