Bugless Beast is a ROM that visually is identical to stock, but runs much better. If you take it and throw the Sense theme on it without installing the Evolution font package, you get a black bar.
The Charity/Smoked Glass ROM is another one that is visually similar to stock except with the "Smoked Glass" theme which isn't all that much of a departure from stock Android.
If you make a Nandroid backup through ROM Manager, you can always flash back to stock if you don't like a new ROM/Theme.
That said it would be nice to figure out how to tweak the notification bar color. I might look into it soon and report back.