Performing a GET request at <prom-server-ip>:9090/metrics returns the Prometheus metrics (not in JSON format) of the Prometheus server itself.

Since you're trying to perform query, you need to use the HTTP API endpoints like /api/v1/query or /api/v1/query_range instead of using /metrics.

$ curl 'http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=up&time=2015-07-01T20:10:51.781Z'
{
   "status" : "success",
   "data" : {
      "resultType" : "vector",
      "result" : [
         {
            "metric" : {
               "__name__" : "up",
               "job" : "prometheus",
               "instance" : "localhost:9090"
            },
            "value": [ 1435781451.781, "1" ]
         },
         {
            "metric" : {
               "__name__" : "up",
               "job" : "node",
               "instance" : "localhost:9100"
            },
            "value" : [ 1435781451.781, "0" ]
         }
      ]
   }
}

For more detailed information visit Prometheus official docs.