Dolores O'Riordan was working on new Cranberries album before she died, says publicist

The Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan was in London to discuss plans for the band's new album when she died.

The singer is to be laid to rest in her home town in Ireland next week after she was found dead in a London hotel on Monday aged 46.

An inquest into her death opened on Friday and was adjourned until April 3 while the court waits for test results.

Her publicist said on Friday that O'Riordan - who was also a member of the alternative rock group D.A.R.K. - had been working on a new Cranberries album in the months before her death. 

"Whilst the primary purpose of Dolores’s trip to London last Sunday evening was for a studio mixing session on Monday and Tuesday with Martin 'Youth' Glover on a recently recorded D.A.R.K. album, it has emerged that while in London she was also due to meet with The Cranberries record label, BMG to discuss plans for the release of a new Cranberries studio album that she had been working on with the band in recent months," reads the statement.

The new album would have been a follow-up to 2017's Something Else, which featured orchestral arrangements of some of their biggest hits including Linger and Zombie.

A tour to promote the album had to be abandoned as O'Riordan struggled with the pain of a back injury. 

A spokesperson for the band's management confirmed the upcoming album.

O'Riordan's body will return to Ireland for a series of services beginning on Sunday before the funeral mass taking place in the Church of Saint Ailbe in Ballybricken, Co Limerick, on Tuesday at 11.30am.

The funeral mass will be broadcast live by Limerick's local radio station.

Sales and streams of the band's back catalogue have rocketed by 1,000% in the days since her death.

Greatest hits collection Stars: The Best Of 1992-2002 landed at number 16 on the albums chart this week, a higher position than its previous peak of number 20 when it was released in 2002.