I've started a melee character I'm going to try to stick with for a while. I like him so far, but I find swinging a mace (he's a blunt kind of guy) to be somewhat boring.

What would you all recommend for melee mods? Something to add some spice to the melee game without overcomplicating it. I don't want to have to memorize dance moves to pull off power hits

I like Duke Patrick's SCA Style Combat, as well as a few other things by the same modder. Not sure about availability (of any of them) these days, mind you.

For a rather different "feel", Unnecessary Violence and/or Deadly Reflex offer many additions/changes to combat - melee in particular, I'd say. But they do affect other things (e.g., throwing weapons, etc.)

Deadly Reflex 6
Adrenaline Fueled Combat
Unecessary Violence, but I'd recommend waiting for the new version to be released

Deadly Reflex...thats a lot of extra stuff to add to an already somewhat buggy setup (I lag at odd times)
AFC...no way I found to reassign the power attack key and i couldn't read the training text..it flew by. Meh.

Any simple ones? Toss down an ESP or two, and get busy?

For right now go with Deadly Reflex 5. It's the next best thing to Deadly Reflex 6. And you are right, DR6 is in Beta it should not be used to play with. (Unless you know what you are doing)

AFC is great, give it a chance. Just use Elys universal silent voice if you can't read the text
Also if you're worried about DR6 being buggy, just use DR5