A year ago or so, I received a few expired films, among which this roll of Kodak Tri-X 400, expired in 2013. The film was shipped from the US to Europe. I stored the film in my freezer until I shot it last week, but it does not appear like it was stored cooled back in the US. As per the rule of thumb, I exposed for the film at 2/3 under box speed, so ISO 250.
I consider myself to be sufficiently proficient with home-development and have had no serious issues before, and so I was rather surprised to see the film come out of the tank with a thick grey base colour. I am aware of expired film being fogged after a considerable amount of time, but I have never seen anything as strong as this and I did not expect the film to be in such a poor state after a mere 7 years, especially since I am still shooting film from 1985 that's in much better shape.
So, my question: what is the cause of this grey base colour? Is it fogging indeed, or is something else at play here?
For good measure, I've also included a side-by-side with Catlabs X 80, which was developed in the same batch of chemicals just days prior:
Rodinal (Adonal)
Adox Stopper and Fixer