One main difference between Melkor and Mairon is that Melkor did not want to be a Dark Lord in canon. Melkor did not like darkness, he hated it. We know that he was impatient of the Void. He disliked it to the point that his dreams were plagued by its darkness when Luthien put him to sleep. He wanted to be in the light of Arda but was forced out with Tulkas' arrival and "brooded in the outer darkness". Melkor did not desire to use darkness. He turned towards it due to circumstance:
But after a battle Melkor is driven out from Earth itself. (The
First Battle?) He finds he can only come there in great secrecy.
At this time he begins first to turn most to cold and darkness.
Melkor decides to dominate "with fear and darkness' because these are things he is aversed to, and therefore things that he perceives as weapons against his targets.
When Melkor causes the first Fall of Men, he presents himself as God and Eru as the Darkness. And it's easy to dismiss that as a blatant life (after all lying is what Melkor does, and at that point HE is the Lord of Darkness) but I also think there's something genuine to it. I think that Melkor had identified Eru with the Void. He had blamed him for depriving him of the Secret Fire, of light, of creation and for dispensing him of agency. From his point of view Melkor was the hero and Eru the villain. After all, we know that Melkor actually wanted to be alligned with Light:
As a shadow Melkor did not then conceive himself. For in his
beginning he loved and desired light, and the form that he took
was exceedingly bright; and he said in his heart: 'On such
brightness as I am the Children shall hardly endure to look;
therefore to know of aught else or beyond or even to strain their
small minds to conceive of it would not be for their good.' But
the lesser brightness that stands before the greater becomes a
darkness. And Melkor was jealous, therefore, of all other
brightnesses, and wished to take all light unto himself.
Eru ensured with a new theme that there would always be a light greater than Melkor's and this too would have made Melkor see him as an opponent and it sealed his hatred for Varda:
To Varda Iluvatar said: 'I will give unto thee a parting gift. Thou shalt take into Ea a light that is holy, coming new from Me, unsullied by the thought and lust of Melkor, and with thee it shall enter into Ea, and be in Ea, but not of Ea.' Wherefore Varda is the most holy and revered of all the Valar, and those that name the light of Varda name the love of Ea that Eru has, and they are afraid, less only to name the
One.
By contrast, we have Mairon who actually revers Darkness. From his whole "for Darkness alone is worshipful, and the Lord thereof [...]" to:
"Death to light, to law, to love!
Cursed be moon and stars above!
May darkness everlasting old
that waits outside in surges cold
drown Manwë, Varda, and the sun!"
Melkor ends up as something he did not want to be. Sauron ends up becoming what he worshipped.
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