By Jason Sendaula
Photos by Zack Gross
“Born” November 1, 2008, Philadelphia-based Metropolis America’s sound tethers the 80s sound to today while adding its own personality. Having formed only 2 years ago, Cristian Mora, Brett Hammond and Rick Eddy had a common goal long before they got together – and through trial and error (and a few bands) they were able to have that vision realized in their last album The Hospital for Regret & Dreams.
Hailing from Miami, Crisitian says that since he was in high school he has always been in a band that he’s wanted to promote. He spent six years in spent in Nashville where had some success with his band there but as Cristian says, “Somebody wanted to have a kid, somebody wanted to move back home, somebody wanted to go full time on their job. So I decided to do a solo record, moved to New York and put together the band of my dreams. Little did I know that New York was not the place, it was the scene that Philly.”
Upon arriving in Philadelphia he went straight away to getting a band together and placed an ad on Craigslist. “I play bass so the ad read like ‘McCartney wanna be bass player who writes looking for guitar play who also writes and sings.’ and he [Brett] answered it the first night and we got together the next night and we wrote a song that night.”
“I was the guy who would sit in his room writing songs but could never find a band to do them right,” Brett says. “So I put them on pro tools and did everything I could but then realized that half these songs were unfinished and just sitting around collecting dust and not doing anything. So I more or less got off my ass, found his ass. Loved his style, loved the fact that we both love the same music genres. Like the craziest bands, the craziest songs of those bands will be our favorites like Kajagoogoo. Just like in the movie Stepbrothers we’ll both say it at the same time, ‘Yep. It was pretty cool.”
“Lucky for me, my inability to sit around and do nothing brought me to these guys,” Rick says. “I was in a band for about 10 years. After our last album the band went on a 3-year hiatus trying to put out [a] perfect record. In the meantime I was going crazy, weren’t playing, we were just concentrating on recording and I need to play. I joined a cover band in Philly and we started doing well but being an artist I had to have that creativity. It’s a lot of fun and all but without that creativity I started getting the itch. I have to create, I have to record, I have to do all this. So, my old band shows no signs of ‘let’s be the next band out there’ and so I found an ad on craigslist for drummer, I found these guys and here we are today.”
“We got along like brothers even before the music,” Crisitan adds. “It’s not worth making music if you are not going to enjoy playing it with the person next to you. I mean I started with the music but as we were recording them that’s where The Hospital for Regret & Dreams came from. We realized that we had a mood going on that pointed us to a direction. So as we were recording those songs it was a way for us to get over our past regrets and a way of accomplishing our dreams.
“Getting ready to record our masterpiece. We’ve been writing songs but more than anything we’ve been pushing ourselves. It’s something I’ve done before, it’s comfortable, I’ve written about before and now we want to take it and go even further,” he says.
“With the new album we’re still holding on to the Hospital the new stuff is still melodic but more upbeat rock. We have taken on, I wouldn’t say more of an indie’s vibe, but more tribute to the 80’s bands that we love but even when saying that it’s all very modern and just a new element to the rock. It’s still alternative but Hospital was a bit more moody melodic rock,” Brett says.
“Hospital was more something that you would just chill too, a little more moody.” Crisitian tells us that the new album will be something that they are calling, “irreverent indie rock. Like if The Cure and Madonna had a child. So it’s got Madonna’s pop but with The Cure’s moody. Not too many people are doing the Madchester sound like the Soup Dragons, everybody’s kind of forgotten about them. We’re giving it its due in a modern way.”
